Hugo Coto Flórez
Hugo Coto Flórez
| |
| Nationality | 🇪🇸 Spanish |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Student · Software developer |
| Education | Universidade de Santiago de Compostela B.Sc. Informatics Engineering (3rd year) |
| Known for | flag.h, eqnx |
| Website | hugocoto.com |
| GitHub | @hugoocoto |
| Contact | Matrix (preferred) me@hugocoto.com |
Hugo Coto Flórez is a Spanish software developer and Informatics Engineering student at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC). He is known for his work on low-level systems programming in C, with a focus on minimalist, suckless-inspired tools and plugin-based architectures.
Hugo maintains an active open-source presence on GitHub and Codeberg with over 42 repositories, and runs a personal website at hugocoto.com. His preferred contact method is Matrix.
"Artist" — as someone said that software development is not about creating beauty. Non-determinism isn't the future.
— Hugo's GitHub bio
Biography
Hugo Coto Flórez grew up in Galicia and moved to Santiago de Compostela to study. He began programming at 16 with Python, as most people do, then found C and decided he did not need anything else. He is currently in his third year of Informatics Engineering at USC, having started the degree in 2023. He describes himself as a "profitless full time programmer" and a "student in his non-free time" — a reflection of his dedication to coding well beyond academic requirements.
Hugo's work gravitates toward the Unix philosophy: small, composable tools that do one thing well. Most of his projects are written in C99 and target Linux environments, with particular interest in terminal interfaces, Wayland graphics, and developer tooling. He came to Linux from Windows not out of ideology, but because it is the only environment where he feels like he knows what the computer is doing. His editor of choice is Neovim.
The subjects that stuck with him during his degree were operating systems, compilers, and networks — the ones where you stop treating the computer as a black box and start understanding what is happening underneath. The book Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces was particularly influential, responsible for a significant portion of his current opinions.
Outside of software, Hugo is actively engaged in physical fitness — he trains at the gym regularly and enjoys a wide range of sports, with a strong commitment to a healthy lifestyle. He is an avid reader and takes pleasure in sharing knowledge with others, often helping people learn new concepts and skills. He describes himself as reserved, preferring a quiet dinner with two people over a party with twenty, and valuing stability over novelty.
Education
Hugo is enrolled in the Bachelor of Science in Informatics Engineering programme at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. He began the degree in 2023 and is currently in his third year. His academic focus areas include systems programming, compilers, operating systems, and networks. He always knew he wanted CS — not because someone told him to, but because he started exploring on his own and never stopped.
Projects
Hugo's open-source work is primarily written in C and follows a minimalist, Unix-inspired design ethos. His pinned projects on GitHub represent the most actively maintained pieces of his portfolio.
Featured projects
- flag.h (v1.0.2)
- A single-file command-line argument parser for C99, inspired by Python's
argparse. Supports named flags, required arguments, positional parameters, default values, and auto-generated help output. Ships as a singleflag.hheader with no dependencies. Documentation available at hugocoto.com/projects/flag.h.[2] - eqnx (Equinox) (75 commits)
- A plugin-based application environment and Wayland graphics library. Eqnx provides a structural foundation for independent software components to coexist within a single visual space — plugins display information on a character matrix and can act as orchestrators for subcomponents. Includes a calendar/task manager plugin written in four days during carnival.[3]
- vicel
- A visual cell editor for terminal environments, written in C.
- fetch
- A suckless-style system information fetcher. Follows the same design philosophy as tools like dmenu and st: minimal, fast, source-configurable.
- piano
- A piano for the terminal. Written because at some point Hugo needed to know if it was possible.
Other work
- 42+ public repositories spanning systems tools, utilities, and experiments.
- Also on Codeberg.
- 49 starred repositories reflecting interests in low-level programming and Unix tooling.
Skills
Programming languages
- C (C99) — primary language across all major projects
- Bash / Shell scripting
- Python
- HTML / CSS
- Makefile
Technologies & environments
- Linux — primary development platform
- Wayland — graphics stack used in eqnx
- Git / GitHub
- Terminal / TUI interfaces
- Unix philosophy and suckless tooling
Languages
- Spanish (native)
- English (professional working proficiency)
Philosophy
Hugo's approach to software is shaped by the suckless philosophy and the Unix tradition: software should be small, auditable, and composable. He writes every line of his projects by hand — as he noted in the eqnx documentation: "I wrote every word by hand, no AI smell this code." Another of his READMEs reads: "Simplicity carried to the extreme becomes elegance."
He prefers code that is well written over code that merely works, and believes that understanding something properly still matters — that reading a good book and playing with the code until it clicks is worth more than skipping to the answer. He holds this opinion quietly, acknowledging it is not a popular one.
His GitHub bio expresses a view of programming as craft: software development is about creating beauty, even when others say otherwise. He is also skeptical of non-deterministic systems — a recurring theme across his project choices. There is no defining origin story or single project that changed everything for him; he programs because he enjoys it, and the finished project is just an excuse to go through the process.
References
- ^ GitHub profile: github.com/hugoocoto. Retrieved May 2026.
- ^ flag.h repository: github.com/hugoocoto/flag.h.
- ^ eqnx repository: github.com/hugoocoto/eqnx.
- ^ Personal website: hugocoto.com.
- ^ Codeberg profile: codeberg.org/hugocoto.
External links
- hugocoto.com — Personal website
- github.com/hugoocoto — GitHub profile
- codeberg.org/hugocoto — Codeberg profile
- @hugocoto:matrix.org — Matrix (preferred contact)
- me@hugocoto.com — Email