Philosophy

The KISS kernel was written using the best of the design principles - Keep It Simple, Stupid. The kernel was implemented as an example for the book The Design and Implementation of Realtime Kernels. Simplicity required the interface to be minimal. Compared to the 100-200 kernel calls of most commercial implementations, KISS provides only 55, 25 of which are Create/Delete/Open/Close calls.

The rationale is that it is preferable to provide the embedded systems programmer with a simple kernel, whose internal design is clearly documented, so that the programmer may write himself any additional functions he thinks he needs. However, the interface is complete, the application does not normally need any additional kernels calls.

If the typical embedded and realtime systems programmer is not capable to read and understand a KISS implementation, we have failed.