The unwritten customs and values that shape how we build
Origins
From Latin: the collective customs, traditions, and moral values of a community. The unwritten codes that govern behavior.
In Code
Open source has mores: review cycles, commit message conventions, the ritual of the pull request, the apprenticeship of reading others' work.
Cultural Patterns
Like reaction-diffusion simulations, social customs emerge from simple interaction rules applied repeatedly across a community.
Practice and Kata
Japanese martial arts encode knowledge in kata—predetermined patterns. Code, too, has kata: the for-loop structure, the async/await pattern, the object-oriented design.
Beauty in Function
The Arts and Crafts movement believed beauty should infuse every functional object. Consider: does your code reward contemplation?
Invisible Forces
Like flow fields, cultural influence moves through communities—invisible currents that shape which practices spread and which fade.
Contemplative Attention
This site rewards staying. Watch the generative patterns shift. Notice the color blocks punctuate like wildflowers.
A Meditation
On the customs and unwritten rules that shape software development, presented with the warmth of a pastoral landscape.
No Navigation
This page is a single scroll. No headers, no link columns, no marketing. Just contemplation and the slow evolution of generative patterns.
Code as Craft
When you write code that others read and build upon, you participate in a tradition stretching back to the first open contributions. You are inscribing mores.
The Colophon
Designed with a palette of quiet and candy-bright. Built in Lora serif, the voice of calligraphy. Animated with the pulse-attention of a heartbeat.
The Customs of Code
Mores.dev is a meditation on the intersection of cultural tradition and software practice. It exists at the boundary where pastoral romance meets technical precision.
Crafted in 2025 with respect for the customs that shape how we work.