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Why the Update Fever Is Bad

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Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#101

Post by PatchMonkey »

digi_owl wrote: post #86
asperous wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's kind of a parallel with signals regarding businesses as well. There may be nothing wrong with a store that hasn't been renovated since the 90s, but it gives off a "run-down" vibe like it wouldn't be there much longer.

Difference is that buildings etc need to be maintained or else they break down. Sofware, baring weirdness like "bitrot" from unreliable storage hardware, do not break down.

CVEs, etc accumulate with enough attention. Whether they're published depends on whether your team courts or snubs the security side of the industry.

I wonder how many coders out there don't know about the dangers of global variables in production software, sans obifuscation. Or that can't articlate why an unbounded array is evil, even if the compiler lets you do that.

Seriously... free love was a nice party. But then when public knowledge of STDs arose, the party died down. Today, condom use is on the rise.

Similarly, our free Hobbyist Software love has had a good run. If it dies back, we'll lose a generation of up-and-coming coders. So I guess the message here is jails/containers? Wear your software condoms, kiddies.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#102

Post by PatchMonkey »

CaptSpify wrote: post #95
jamy015 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not happy with the direction a certain piece of software is heading in, you are free to switch to a competitor that fits your workflow better. This mentality is what led to Windows XP sticking around long after being declared dead.

If you are lucky to have a competitor. This type of thinking is so naive, I can't believe we still see it pop up every now and then.

I'd like you to expound upon that lack of competition. Where does it pop up?

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#103

Post by chakalakasp »

justinclift wrote: post #71
egypturnash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Photoshop has a new release every year or so, usually with new features.

The term "Creeping Featuritis" probably applies to that specific example. And any MS Office release in the last decade or so. :)

Nah, with Photoshop most of the new features are pretty useful. As abysmal as Adobe is with some stuff, they seem to get Photoshop right all the time.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#104

Post by watt »

eadmund wrote: post #76

This is something I see with Common Lisp libraries a lot. Many of them look abandoned, because they've had no updates in years. But they're really not: they each aimed to do one thing, they each do it well, and they don't have any more (notable) bugs. The Lisp spec doesn't change, so if a library's functional spec doesn't change … it's complete. E.g. https://github.com/dardoria/uuid a library to generate UUIDs: once…

It does not even have a readme. What kind of definition of done is this?

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#105

Post by tjoff »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #69
tjoff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because being maintained is very important for users and one of the easiest and most convincing ways to show that is to release updates. But then we have the other side, releasing update after update without fixing or responding to common issues. That is quite damaging as well.

> Because being maintained is very important for users and one of the easiest and most convincing ways to show that is to release updates. It's so true that you never ever see people using decade old versions of software, right? Users care that their shit works, that's it.

> Users care that their shit works, that's it.

Exactly, so when that forced OS update broke the software it is kind of nice to know that someone is still around to fix it.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#106

Post by CaptSpify »

PatchMonkey wrote: post #102
CaptSpify wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are lucky to have a competitor. This type of thinking is so naive, I can't believe we still see it pop up every now and then.

I'd like you to expound upon that lack of competition. Where does it pop up?

Android vs iPhone, any website that is moving into a "modern" framework direction. Software that runs MRI's, or CT's. Also any software that is picked by middle management, rather than the people that actually use the software: ADP, Oracle, anything in the education realm, etc.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#107

Post by xg15 »

PatchMonkey wrote: post #100
xg15 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is part of the mindset the OP is criticizing. Following that logic, a software cannot possibly be completed - It can be either in development or dead. Which would mean you either have a budget of time, money and resources for constant maintenance of your software - or you might not write that software at all. Repeat that for every new piece of software you want to write. The problem is that this is impos…

Did you realize that Torvalds did not have anything to do with Linux 2.6.32.70? He offloaded the whole project onto another team (who mostly backported fixes) that kept it going until early 2016. The rest of us were already in Linux 4.X territory by then. If you cant maintain it, you can pay someone. Or, thanks to Github, lets talk about letting the code-literate userbase sort it out themselves. Assuming they care en…

This assumes there is a team or a "code-literate userbase" and you trust them enough not to do bad things with your software (e.g. add adverts, tracking, backdoors or miners)

> Or, we could pivot this discussion to the "evils of Capitalism" and whatnot since that userbase probably needs to eat.

Or we could try to back and accept that software could also simply be a tool and doesn't have to be an enterprise.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#108

Post by timrichard »

5ilv3r wrote: post #81
JeffL wrote: post #20

I stopped letting my iPhone update. I swear every update makes it slower and buggier. My old iPad which was perfectly fast and great at the time is now almost unusable after 4 iOS upgrades. It won't even play Sudoko without constant mini freezes.

People would rather use a functional but insecure tool than a broken secure one. No question. It's hard for devs to understand that for some reason.

My iOS device is noticeably laggier too, and I find it difficult to point the finger at security fixes. More likely the bloat from a load of features that nobody asked for.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#109

Post by timrichard »

digi_owl wrote: post #89
jakobegger wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are other ways to build software. You can make apps with very few dependencies, use stable APIs only, program defensively, make sure you properly read the docs and handle all error conditions, don’t add unnecessary features, etc. The result can be an app that requires minimal maintenance and it might work for years without any changes at all.

But doing so takes focus and diligence, something the software world is notoriously short on (likely they can always push another fix to prod, unlike with hardware).

And it wasn't always like that with software. We're used to the current situation in the age of portable devices and app stores, but I remember buying software in the 80s and 90s when most people didn't have a modem or any networking connectivity on their home machines. You went to a store, and bought software on disk or CD that came in a cardboard box shrinkwrapped in cellophane. You tried out the features, and it either worked or it didn't. And if it didn't, you were stuck - but that generally didn't happen, to my memory. Because of the lack of options when the product was on the shelves, it was tested rigorously. (Of course it would be fair to say that it would be a siloed runnable that wouldn't generally have dependencies or be required to interoperate with anything else, but the feature density would be comparable).

There was none of this "fix it in tomorrow's release" from the "just ship it duuuudes", so you didn't find obvious defects in features within minutes.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#110

Post by martin_ky »

I don't know if it's just me, but I have to exert significant energy to convince (typically) new hires, that it does not really hurt anything if we use older versions of some dependencies, as long as they are stable and we are not hitting any bugs or vulnerabilities. In other words: it is not reason enough and not worth to update only because a new version was just released.

Such discussions usually end in one final argument from the new developer: "But your version is no longer maintained!"

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