There are countless frameworks out there, but only two are worth using as an OS foundation.
First Principles: Stop Copying Homework
First principles has been hyped into mythology, but the core is simple: reject analogy.
Looking at how others do it or what “best practice” dictates is just copying homework. It feels fast, but when they step into a trap, you follow right behind.
Strip an issue down to bare physical facts, then build upward from zero. It takes longer, but the conclusion belongs to you, and when something breaks, you know exactly which brick came loose.
KISS: Beware Intellectual Vanity
Everyone quotes KISS, yet few actually practice it.
Engineers have intellectual vanity. Writing a tiny tool and wrapping it in three layers of design patterns, or building a personal blog on microservices and Kubernetes. That complexity never serves users; it just strokes the developer’s ego.
Complex systems create exponentially more surface area for bugs and maintenance headaches.
If a shell script works, don’t build a project. If SQLite handles the load, don’t spin up a distributed cluster. Deleting code feels better than writing it, and only simple things survive reality.