Going barefoot means feeling the terrain. You build strength, you notice things you’d miss in shoes, and you can’t pretend the ground isn’t there.

The barefoot developer mindset applies this to software: resist the abstraction, know what’s actually happening underneath, choose tools you can reason about.

Core tenets:

• Read the source — when something breaks, go to the code, not just the docs
• Know the layer below — understand what your framework is doing, not just how to configure it
• Choose boring technology — proven tools with known failure modes over exciting ones with unknown ones
• Constraint as discipline — working with fewer dependencies forces understanding

What it’s not:

It’s not about writing everything from scratch or rejecting useful tools. It’s about maintaining literacy with your stack — the ability to debug, reason, and make intentional choices.

The tension:

Barefoot development exists in direct tension with vibe coding. One asks you to go deeper; the other asks you to trust the output. Neither is universally right. The skill is knowing which posture the situation calls for.

See also:

• Tool Literacy vs Tool Dependence
• Vibe Coding — Definition and Spectrum
• Local-First Software Principles