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Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

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Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#131

Post by kobeya »

Kluny wrote: post #118
dismantlethesun wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Nannies make the world go round. Without them, half the workforce would be stuck at home" For my entry to Improbable Ideas day.... why don't we bring children to work? After they're no longer infants, its' plausible for children to simply run around the office, sitting quietly in the same rooms as their parents, and perhaps doing odd-jobs. It'd require a more holistic attitude to education than is presently allowe…

The thing is, for people with kids, at least half of their motivation for showing up to work is getting away from the kids for a couple hours. (Exaggerating, but still).

As someone with kids, I never understood why people say this. Oh what I'd give to spend every waking moment with them as they discover the world.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#132

Post by [deleted] »

euske wrote: post #45
milquetoastaf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. Yep, no other cultures maintain anything.

This is pretty laughable. To me, almost every Western country is half-broken. When I lived in the US, I was surprised how frequent power faults were there. Streets are full of bumps and corroded pipes were everywhere. And in Europe. Do they have any concept of a decent public bathroom over there? Oh, and don't get me started on how badly their trains are operating. I bet that many train accidents are due to the poor…

[deleted]

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#133

Post by kobeya »

draw_down wrote: post #4

You might say I've observed this many times in my career. I think the best move career-wise is to be one of the people who makes the new thing. Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. At least in my experience. Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised…

> Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of?

I can think of a few, actually. Pretty much every BDFL in every open source project ever. Most famous is probably Linus Torvalds. He invented the first version of Linux, yes, but he's been primarily a maintainer not inventor ever since.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#134

Post by [deleted] »

blowski wrote: post #128
cgio wrote: post #126

Or as I like to say, "incompetence makes the world go round". Extracting little glimpses of functionality out of a chaotic mess is a challenging, at times satisfying and definitely valuable exercise that keeps many people at work... Maintenance is not the opposite of innovation, it is the opposite of good design.

I'm not sure I understand your point - the best built system in the world still needs maintenance. Parts go rusty. Requirements change. Those are not results of bad design, but the inevitable consequences of the real world.

[deleted]

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#135

Post by cgio »

blowski wrote: post #128
cgio wrote: post #126

Or as I like to say, "incompetence makes the world go round". Extracting little glimpses of functionality out of a chaotic mess is a challenging, at times satisfying and definitely valuable exercise that keeps many people at work... Maintenance is not the opposite of innovation, it is the opposite of good design.

I'm not sure I understand your point - the best built system in the world still needs maintenance. Parts go rusty. Requirements change. Those are not results of bad design, but the inevitable consequences of the real world.

The better the design the less the maintenance. There might not be a perfect design in the real world, and we would agree on that. But at least the ideal perfect design would imply zero maintenance.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#136

Post by nightcracker »

kobeya wrote: post #133
draw_down wrote: post #4

You might say I've observed this many times in my career. I think the best move career-wise is to be one of the people who makes the new thing. Those who clean up after them, bear the brunt of their design flaws and careless mistakes, will never be recognized, appreciated, or remunerated as well. At least in my experience. Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? (Not someone who devised…

> Ask yourself this: who is the most famous maintainer you can think of? I can think of a few, actually. Pretty much every BDFL in every open source project ever. Most famous is probably Linus Torvalds. He invented the first version of Linux, yes, but he's been primarily a maintainer not inventor ever since.

> (Not someone who devised an innovation and then maintained it - pure maintenance)

Everything you've mentioned doesn't count.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#137

Post by blowski »

cgio wrote: post #135
blowski wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your point - the best built system in the world still needs maintenance. Parts go rusty. Requirements change. Those are not results of bad design, but the inevitable consequences of the real world.

The better the design the less the maintenance. There might not be a perfect design in the real world, and we would agree on that. But at least the ideal perfect design would imply zero maintenance.

What happens if requirements change? What happens if a related technology is invented which would make your current design more efficient? Do you class changes like that under maintenance?

And how do you check your theoretically 'no-maintenance-required' design genuinely doesn't need any maintenance? And how do you get round the catch 22 that you can't build a perfect system without perfect knowledge about what to build, but you can't have perfect knowledge without feedback from an existing system?

Instead of building a product that theoretically never needs maintenance, I'd rather build a product for which maintenance is easy.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#139

Post by theprop »

Trundle wrote: post #107
theprop wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point!! Yes, exactly!!

So you agree? Innovators are responsible for depleted resources and global warming.

Well, perhaps it's the previous generation's innovators and the current generation's maintainers...if you want to trace out lines of responsibility but that's tricky...whoever discovered petroleum probably never wanted so much burned up to heat up the whole planet! The maintainers (energy companies) do...they're going to die (those firms) and they're ready to take the whole planet and all of us with 'em.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#140

Post by wjke2i9 »

> I’ve actually felt slightly uncomfortable at TED for the last two days, because there’s a lot of vision going on, right? And I am not a visionary. I do not have a five-year plan. I’m an engineer. And I think it’s really – I mean – I’m perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying, “I want to go there.” But I’m looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in. This is the kind of person I am. - Linus Torvalds @TED[1]

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_lin...

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