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kennethreitz 6b6ce3f9c8 Polish all software pages; new essay: This Website's Changelog
- Every page under /software rewritten or tightened: 165 em-dashes
  removed, download stats corrected against live PyPI numbers,
  broken kjvstudy/httpbin links fixed (homepage too)
- Full rewrites: sample pack, clint, autoenv, osx-gcc-installer,
  games and legacy indexes; Responder promoted to Major Projects
- New essay documenting today's changes, the Obsidian sync pipeline
  (kr-vault plugin + sync-repo.py), and uv; added to essays index

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-06-12 00:57:51 -04:00

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# Software
Tools for humans. That phrase started as a tagline for [Requests](/software/requests) and became a design philosophy that shaped everything I've built since.
If the developer feels stupid, the API is wrong.
## Major Projects
- [**Requests**](/software/requests): HTTP for Humans. The most downloaded Python package on Earth. 60+ million installs a day.
- [**Certifi**](/software/certifi): Python's SSL trust store. Mozilla's CA bundle, packaged. Even more downloads than Requests.
- [**Responder**](/software/responder): A familiar HTTP service framework. Requests semantics, server side. [This site runs on it](/essays/2026-03-22-this_site_now_runs_on_responder).
- [**Pipenv**](/software/pipenv): Python Dev Workflow for Humans. Pip and virtualenv, unified. Spiritual predecessor to [uv](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv).
- [**Tablib**](/software/tablib): Tabular Datasets for Humans. Format-agnostic data. Your dataset knows how to become CSV, JSON, Excel, YAML.
## Libraries
- [**SimpleMind**](/software/simplemind): AI for Humans. One interface to every major AI provider.
- [**Records**](/software/records): SQL for Humans. Just write the query. Get results. Export to anything via Tablib.
- [**Maya**](/software/maya): Datetimes for Humans. Parse "tomorrow" and get a timezone-aware result.
- [**Legit**](/software/legit): Git for Humans. Simple commands for common Git workflows.
- [**Delegator**](/software/delegator): Subprocesses for Humans. Shell commands without subprocess pain.
- [**dj-database-url**](/software/dj-database-url): Database URLs for Django. Born at Heroku, used everywhere.
- [**Background**](/software/background): Background tasks. One decorator, no infrastructure.
## Creative
- [**PyTheory**](/software/pytheory): Music Theory for Humans. Scales, chords, synthesis, and sequencing as Python objects. [Read about its revival with AI](/essays/2026-03-22-pytheory_breaking_through_five_years_of_creative_block_with_ai).
- [**Infinite State Sample Pack**](/software/infinite-state-sample-pack): Open-source synthesizer samples and loops for music production.
- [**Games**](/software/games): A brief adventure in minimalist game development.
## Websites
- [**kjvstudy.org**](/software/websites/kjvstudy): A free digital study Bible built with AI. [How it was made](/essays/2026-03-20-building_a_digital_study_bible_with_ai).
- [**RhymePad**](/software/websites/rhymepad): A scratchpad for poets and rappers that hears the rhymes as you write.
- [**httpbin.org**](/software/websites/httpbin): HTTP request and response testing. Used by millions of developers.
- [**The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python**](/software/websites/python-guide): Opinionated Python best practices. Later an O'Reilly book.
- [**Poems by Sarah**](/software/websites/poemsbysarah): A publishing platform for my wife's poetry.
- [**More websites**](/software/websites): pep8.org, StrainsDB, and this site itself, which is [open source](https://github.com/kennethreitz/kennethreitz.org).
## The Philosophy
Every library starts from the same conviction: find the pain point, study how people actually think about the problem, then design an interface that matches their mental model. The *Zen of Python* captures it:
- Beautiful is better than ugly.
- Explicit is better than implicit.
- Simple is better than complex.
- Complex is better than complicated.
These aren't just code rules. They're design rules. The same thinking that produces a clean API produces a [clear essay](/essays/2025-08-26-programming_as_spiritual_practice) and a [well-designed day](/essays/2026-03-18-designing_for_the_worst_day).
Some projects have been retired or handed to maintainers who care for them better than I could. They live on [the legacy shelf](/software/legacy), kept for posterity.
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More on [GitHub](https://github.com/kennethreitz). Building since 2008.