Kinda hate the trend of making software without features and telling that its leet because it can be extended. So many redditors making the same config files for the same system which will be broken after a week. Most of these people dont even program and complain when they cant get things done.
They also make Linux look harder than it is.
I have 99 problems with software engineering, but what you are talking about ain't one.
Although I have to admit that interacting with a loser who thinks that emulating technology over half century old to manage his system is somehow The Right Thing can be quite unpleasant. My advice would be to stop hanging out with the wrong crowd.
As for what you said, here is my take - software minimalism as you put it is really just a mix of delusion, laziness, and lack of skill. As old adage says, the final 20% of a program requires 80% of the work. Not everybody is willing to go that extra mile, but also not everybody is willing to admit it. An easy way to protect a fragile ego.
This is something that I've seen in the ``rewrite it in Rust'' crowd. There was a project going, to rewrite Emacs in Rust. From what I understand, they did the easy parts, and when they were left with difficult parts, they hid behind the fact that they were ``unpaid volunteers'' and they could definitely ``figure it out'' if they were paid. 135 thousand commits and tons of excuses later, the software doesn't seem to even build anymore. They still pat themselves on the back.
What are the 99 problems? I guess one of them is the name?
I like minimalism, but I don't like suckless philosophy, where I need to rewrite the source code, invent wheels and/or install numerous patches to make things work, which kinda contradicts minimalist approach.
Therefore, I prefer "bloated" Emacs, xmonad, Java and so on, where you get user-friendly "interface", but these technologies are still exactly minimalist, meaning I don't get features that I don't need.
I think possibly the suckless people think what made early unix and Plan 9 great was the minimalism compared to today, but I actually think it was the consistency: The OS was written and documented by one vendor and not loosely cobbled together like modern Linux distribution. This means that it is very easy to find your way around it once you've familiarised yourself with it.
In that regard, Emacs fits the bill (if you only live inside it).
unix plan9 are only consistent when compared to a linux distribution