Person/Joe Armstrong/Blog/14/06/25/Minimal Viable Program

• Minimal Viable Program

  • Author: Person/Joe Armstrong

  • Summary

    • Joe Armstrong defines a minimal viable program as the smallest program that solves a particular problem with no non-essential features.
    • His example is a tiny Erlang-era ticketing system built from numbered text files, version control, and a few shell scripts, arguing that extreme simplicity is a major reason such tools remain understandable and durable.

  • Notes

    • Removing a necessary feature would make the program useless; adding extra features would make it less minimal without making it more essential.
    • The ticket system centered on one command to create a new ticket file, with reporting delegated to simple shell tooling.
    • The piece is a useful precedent for terminal-native, text-file-oriented tools that prefer leverage from the surrounding Unix environment over application-level complexity.

  • Links

    • tk