I might flesh this out into a proper post, but I remember stumbling on this weird website: https://www.reactionary.software/
I originally found it on r/shittysysadmin when a screenshot of the discord for it (so much for modern software being bloated and unusable) had the person behind it defending that the site didn't have an ssl cert, since that was a way "modern browsers control you".
I was curious and poked around on the site, and first thing you see is this:
Make software great again!
For programmers who hate modern software. Modern software is overcomplicated, bloated, unreliable, incomprehensible, pointlessly ideological, and mostly unusable. We like the values of older software: simplicity, reliability, and usability.
This seems pretty fashy, but there is some legitimate criticisms of modern software.
Saving programming from modern culture
Nevermind, fash.
On the about page, he starts by mentioning html swipers, and one he made himself. The one he made is pretty dogshit on anything but a phone.
After talking a bit on how terrible modern software he then compares it to brick walls, which were also so much better back in the day (?).
He then rambles about ancient greece and rome.
An excerpt:
Why did it take to long? Because humanity had become just too stupid to appreciate good ideas. They weren't completely removed. Ptolemy's horrible system did require some intelligence to create. [...] Today's West is currently at the level of the decaying Greeks, heading toward complete idiocracy. The programmers in Silicon Valley are like Ptolemy, able to construct and maintain horrible overcomplicated monstrosities, but totally unable to innovate at a fundamental level. All good programming ideas are rejected because they don't fit into current programming ideologies. Any programmer like Aristarchus who comes up with a good programming idea will be rejected and ridiculed for violating orthodoxy. Modern programmers are in love with their own ideas and love complexity. They hate simplicity and anything that violates their ideologies.
He then complains about how his parser was met with scorn by Modern Programmers, because they were too stupid to appreciate how good it was?
The post is here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Compilers/comments/cv78b3/parsing_for_programmers_who_hate_modern_software/
Some excerpts:
What is good?
The short answer is that everything that modern culture hates is good, and everything that modern culture loves is bad. But we need more details than that. You can find good values in scripture or in good traditional culture. These values should be applied to programming and to everything else in life. I wrote an Old Testament guide to programming. I also discussed applying traditional Japanese culture to programming. These are just two examples. Any other scripture like the Quran or any traditional culture should work fine to give you good values, in contrast to the horrible values of modern culture, and these good values can guide you to writing good reactionary software.
So, anything anti-modern is good?
Going back to the homepage, there's a page for existing reactionary software.
Java 8.
One of the pinnacles of software, to him, is Java 8.
Not java specifically, just java 8.
Luan is a language he made, which I can only describe as a mash of lua, java and php.
Here's a snippet from the docs:
local Io = require "luan:Io.luan"
local Http = require "luan:http/Http.luan"
return function()
Io.stdout = Http.response.text_writer()
%>
<!doctype html>
<html>
<body>
Hello World
</body>
</html>
<%
end
So, this is basically a lua clone, written in java. with a few missing features .
The why page on the luan site is probably the most deranged bit of this.
Luan rejects the complexity of modern software. [...] Luan will appeal to you depends on who you are. Members of modern culture will not like Luan because they hate simplicity. Luan will only appeal to good cultures that value simplicity, so I will address the two good cultures that I know of.
The mentioned two good cultures are the Mennonites, and the Japanese.
Japan is the only remaining country that I know of that values quality.
You cannot expect to achieve Japanese standards of quality and reliability if you use modern western software. So use Luan instead.
He has a chronically inactive forum at https://mikraite.arkian.net/Reactionary-Software-f1999.html .
Also, shoutout to this political take: https://web.archive.org/web/20240831203139/http://mikraite.arkian.net/Are-democrats-actually-our-allies-td4846.html