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Does the software industry learn?

tomrenner.com

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Re: Does the software industry learn?

#11

Post by galaxyLogic »

I think there's a myth that rewriting software is bad, or at least a symptom of badness, and "reusing" software is ideal.

But writing software is really like creating plans: plans for what the machine should do. Of course there is much room for reusing old plans as components of your new plan. But still every plan must be about what is needed at the moment, not about reusing existing plan-components.

In human communications we don't "reuse" old communications much do we? Well maybe we do a bit, using common utterances. But those are more like idioms of the language, not "subroutines".

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#12

Post by mettamage »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #11

I think there's a myth that rewriting software is bad, or at least a symptom of badness, and "reusing" software is ideal. But writing software is really like creating plans: plans for what the machine should do. Of course there is much room for reusing old plans as components of your new plan. But still every plan must be about what is needed at the moment, not about reusing existing plan-components. In human communi…

I suppose if you squint, then rewriting software means: properly reading/understanding the old code.

Sort of.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#13

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #11

I think there's a myth that rewriting software is bad, or at least a symptom of badness, and "reusing" software is ideal. But writing software is really like creating plans: plans for what the machine should do. Of course there is much room for reusing old plans as components of your new plan. But still every plan must be about what is needed at the moment, not about reusing existing plan-components. In human communi…

My feeling is that rewriting is used as blunt weapon when the developer lacks the inclination or skill to learn what was written before. I’m been guilty of this.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#14

Post by galaxyLogic »

morsch wrote: post #5
mdoms wrote: post #4

Another story on the front page right now is "how I built a date picker". In 2022, people are still building date pickers. Imagine the progress our field could make were it not for the navel gazing, NIHing and pointless reworking.

Hardly specific to software engineering, and maybe (but not certainly) that should tell us that there is something to navel-gazing and reworking of fundamentals and basics.

If creating furniture was physically as easy as writing software, I think many people would create their own furniture, just to create a chair that fits them exactly.

Similarly in software there is not "one size that perfectly fits everybody". Therefore there is much need for customization.

When you write software you are in effect not only creating the program. You are creating a system that consists of the computer, its program, and its user. The way the task is divided between what the human does and what the computer does can be done in very many ways. In some systems that results in a system where users need to do more but thus also have more options for controlling the system. Therefore there are so many different ways any "applications" can be written.

No program is an island. It is something that must interact with its users. It is always designed to be a part of a bigger system consisting of itself and its users.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#15

Post by b3orn »

TacoSteemers wrote: post #9
mdoms wrote: post #4

Another story on the front page right now is "how I built a date picker". In 2022, people are still building date pickers. Imagine the progress our field could make were it not for the navel gazing, NIHing and pointless reworking.

Unfortunately the browser implementations of the HTML5 datepicker only make sense for an audience that understands the US date notation. They can't be configured, as far as I know.

What? The html date picker just uses the system date picker. And the value is formatted as yyyy-mm-dd when you submit it, that's not the US date format.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#16

Post by renewiltord »

mdoms wrote: post #4

Another story on the front page right now is "how I built a date picker". In 2022, people are still building date pickers. Imagine the progress our field could make were it not for the navel gazing, NIHing and pointless reworking.

This is true. Because other software engineers built things, I osmosed their knowledge through the Layer 8 network. All software engineers are linked through the Khala- our sacred union of mind and machine. This ushered in our golden age, the so called Boom of Kim Dotcom.

But a new era has arisen, with a new God from this combined mind. Copilot rises and casts a great shadow on us all.

In past years, children were born with monads in their minds, functors at their fingers. Teens rose from sleep speaking in bytecode and LLVM IR. But now that is lost, mankind’s combined mind is being eaten by the power of Copilot and the children’s fingers only hit Tab.

We should never have known each other so intimately. The risen god of our inbred mind is a dark spiral. Thought itself fades.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#17

Post by raverbashing »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #13
galaxyLogic wrote: post #11

I think there's a myth that rewriting software is bad, or at least a symptom of badness, and "reusing" software is ideal. But writing software is really like creating plans: plans for what the machine should do. Of course there is much room for reusing old plans as components of your new plan. But still every plan must be about what is needed at the moment, not about reusing existing plan-components. In human communi…

My feeling is that rewriting is used as blunt weapon when the developer lacks the inclination or skill to learn what was written before. I’m been guilty of this.

But even if you know what is written, good luck making that PHP 3 website keep up with times.

Or that old C library written for old versions of OS/other libs.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#18

Post by eternityforest »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #11

I think there's a myth that rewriting software is bad, or at least a symptom of badness, and "reusing" software is ideal. But writing software is really like creating plans: plans for what the machine should do. Of course there is much room for reusing old plans as components of your new plan. But still every plan must be about what is needed at the moment, not about reusing existing plan-components. In human communi…

A lot of software isn't quite like a plan. It's more like a training manual with hundreds of plans for different scenarios and rules for choosing them and how to modify them.

People who write individual plans don't reuse them or believe in reuse. They're useless once the plan needs to change.

People who write metaplans aren't solving problems, they're trying to to solve general classes of problems, like "Manage booking at any business that has things that are booked"

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#19

Post by debaserab2 »

mdoms wrote: post #4

Another story on the front page right now is "how I built a date picker". In 2022, people are still building date pickers. Imagine the progress our field could make were it not for the navel gazing, NIHing and pointless reworking.

..someone really ought to invent The Date Picker to Rule them All. Hm, maybe I'll give it a shot.

Re: Does the software industry learn?

#20

Post by csande17 »

Given the number of times we have failed to learn the lesson "downloading code from untrusted sources and running it is a bad idea" -- the log4j and NPM colors fiascos spring to mind -- I think it's fair to conclude that this industry is completely incapable of learning anything, ever.
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