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Software Rot

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Re: Software Rot

#241

Post by Ygg2 »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #234
Ygg2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still doing the same thing The core issue, in my humble opinion, is that it's not doing the same thing. But from a thousand miles away it looks like that, because everyone uses 20% of functionality, but everyone in aggregate uses 100% of functionality. > I think it's worth noting that one reason hardware rots is because software seems to become slower and slower while still doing the same thing it did 15 years ago.…

Well Slack may have a few more features over IRC but none of them should cause my laptop fans to start spinning. Many of the slowdowns in modern web are because of trackers. Software may be more efficient but all that is neglected by software trying to do more. But so much of that "more" isn't resulting in more features for the user. And yes convenience, social adoption and flashy modern appearance are major factors…

> Well Slack may have a few more features over IRC but none of them should cause my laptop fans to start spinning. Many of the slowdowns in modern web are because of trackers. Software may be more efficient but all that is neglected by software trying to do more. But so much of that "more" isn't resulting in more features for the user.

It's literally Electron based. Trackers are a rounding error in the ocean that is Chrome + Node.

Got one idling in memory on my Intel mac rn. Let's see. 341 MB or Slack renderer, 198 MB of Slack Helper GPU, 72 MB for Slack itself + 50MB for Slack Helper stuff. Literally eating 661 MB of memory doing practically nothing. Which means a huge web tracker (circa 10MB) is 1.5% of that.

Electron itself is the culprit, more than any tracker. And reason Electron is used is that: HTML/CSS/JS is the only cross platform GUI that looks similar on all platforms, has enough docs/tutorials, and has enough of frontend developers available.

Re: Software Rot

#242

Post by noduerme »

ozim wrote: post #145
immibis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building on bedrock is one extreme; the other is to become extremely fluid - build on quicksand but do it efficiently every time the quicksand shifts. AS3 may stop being useful, but if you can use some tool to recompile AS3 code to web JavaScript, you suffer no loss.

Another example is people from EU making fun of US buildings. Lasting centuries may or may not be preferable. There are places where you want to cheaply rebuild from scratch. Your castle after tornado and flooding will be irreparably bad. Most castles suck badly by not taking advantage of new materials and I myself would not like to live in 100 yo building. Same for software, there are pieces that should be build to…

I'd call this attitude callow.

Re: Software Rot

#243

Post by noduerme »

gr4vityWall wrote: post #106
noduerme wrote: post #69

I wish I could write all the business logic I write on an NES and never have to worry about requirements going bad. I guess the thing is, if you're writing anything on top of a network layer of any kind, eventually it's going to require patches unless you literally own all the wires and all the nodes in the network, like a secure power plant or some money clearing system in a bank that's been running the same COBOL s…

> 50-60% of my lifetime code output before 2018, and pretty much all the large libraries I had written, were in AS3 Out of curiosity, what kind of work did you do? Regarding our old AS3, did you have any luck with Haxe? I assume it would be a straightforward port.

HaXe is great fun as a language, and I would definitely consider it now if I were writing a new game from scratch. But I never found anything to be a straightforward port from as3. There was too much unsupported particularly in networking. Too much of what I wrote relied on Adobe's NetConnection and socket implementations, plus other .fl packages that never made it over. Not looking at it right now, but that was pretty much the wall I hit at the time around 2019... there was no build target that wouldn't require rewriting the whole way a multiplayer game platform handled networking to get around the sandbox limitations that you could work inside of in AIR or Flash.

Maybe I was just kinda dejected and could have solved it, but instead I moved over to TS and PixiJS, ported some necessary logic and started my whole stack over.

Re: Software Rot

#244

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Ygg2 wrote: post #240
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use paint, because it starts fast so I don't waste my time. When I want complex edit, I use paint.net - because it does everything yet starts million times faster than Krita/Gimp/Photoshop. In fact paint.net 3 already had all the features in 2008, after that it was vapid churn, it's literally impossible to notice the difference.

> When I want complex edit, I use paint.net That's kind of my point. Even you eschew Paint's simplicity when you need a more complex transformation. Nothing you do in Paint.Net isn't impossible in Paint, given enough calculation and preparation. So a performance isn't the deciding factor. It's the speed of achieving thing X (of which startup/lag is a tiny cost). Similarly in Paint.Net you could emulate many Photoshop…

Performance is a deciding factor, it's the reason I use paint and don't use Krita/Gimp/Photoshop. I use Ctrl+Z for non-destructive editing in paint. Also paint has a more reliable and predictable UI, you never know what those overly smart editors will do. Will they add too much antialiasing? Randomly switch to subpixel precision? Insert transparent background (antialiased)?

Re: Software Rot

#245

Post by legends2k »

eviks wrote: post #103
legends2k wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are other parameters I would consider like maintainability, ergonomics, mind share, ease of deployment, etc. The ubiquitous availability point triumphs most others though. Installation of new toolchain is usually a hassle when the same task can be done with existing tools. Also when I present it in a company setting installing new software and broadening the security attack surface is the first pushback I…

Do you advocate the use of Notepad on Windows to edit text because it already exists? What about the increase in the security attack surface from using languages that make it easy to make mistakes in something basic like quoting/escaping? Does it get in the top 10 of pushbacks?

My comment didn't convey it, but I'm with you on using the right tool for the right job. Just that I always don't have the luxury to do so. And yes like the other comment I'd use it for throw away scripts and glue code, instead of installing a new toolchain. Longevity and importance should warrant doing it. Cheers!

Re: Software Rot

#246

Post by Ygg2 »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #244
Ygg2 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I want complex edit, I use paint.net That's kind of my point. Even you eschew Paint's simplicity when you need a more complex transformation. Nothing you do in Paint.Net isn't impossible in Paint, given enough calculation and preparation. So a performance isn't the deciding factor. It's the speed of achieving thing X (of which startup/lag is a tiny cost). Similarly in Paint.Net you could emulate many Photoshop…

Performance is a deciding factor, it's the reason I use paint and don't use Krita/Gimp/Photoshop. I use Ctrl+Z for non-destructive editing in paint. Also paint has a more reliable and predictable UI, you never know what those overly smart editors will do. Will they add too much antialiasing? Randomly switch to subpixel precision? Insert transparent background (antialiased)?

> Performance is a deciding factor

There are two things in play: just because it's a deciding factor for you doesn't mean it's a deciding factor for everyone else. Second, even for you, Paint isn't enough. You also got Paint.net. You can reproduce almost any effect in PS or Gimp or Krita in Paint/Imagemagick. Why not just use those two for everything.

It's the same thing as using an IDE vs notepad(++). Anything done in the IDE behemoth can be done in notepad. Albeit at a significant time penalty, and with way more CLI jousting.

> I use Ctrl+Z for non-destructive editing in paint

That's not really non-destructive editing - that's Undo. A non-destructive editing means you can edit, change things, save, close the program. Reopen file after X days amount of time, and change effect or thing you applied.

Re: Software Rot

#247

Post by BobaFloutist »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #209
BobaFloutist wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But adding features isn't staying at the same spot.

Could be, if you're attracting some users who wanted the new stuff and pushing out other customers who just wanted fast and stable.

I guess if the same spot refers to marketshare

Re: Software Rot

#248

Post by gr4vityWall »

noduerme wrote: post #243
gr4vityWall wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 50-60% of my lifetime code output before 2018, and pretty much all the large libraries I had written, were in AS3 Out of curiosity, what kind of work did you do? Regarding our old AS3, did you have any luck with Haxe? I assume it would be a straightforward port.

HaXe is great fun as a language, and I would definitely consider it now if I were writing a new game from scratch. But I never found anything to be a straightforward port from as3. There was too much unsupported particularly in networking. Too much of what I wrote relied on Adobe's NetConnection and socket implementations, plus other .fl packages that never made it over. Not looking at it right now, but that was pret…

Thanks, I appreciate the answer. Did you consider releasing your AS3 code under a Free Software license? Some people could find it worth to port it to Haxe.

Re: Software Rot

#249

Post by vrighter »

LittleCloud wrote: post #105
vrighter wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did c# have type erasure?

C# 1.0 did not have generics, period. So the standard dictionary (Hashtable†) type took keys and values typed as "System.Object". As seen in the linked documentation this class still exists in the latest .NET to this day. Occasionally one would still encounter non-generic classes like this, when working with older frameworks/libraries, which cause a fair bit of impedence mismatch with modern styles of coding. (Also o…

Yeah, that does not mean type erasure. There were just no generics. That is just making use of polymorphism in the language. At no point is there a difference between what the language knows a container can contain, and what the runtime knows it can contain. There is nothing erased.

Re: Software Rot

#250

Post by cheema33 »

juliangmp wrote: post #238
SoftTalker wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only another 25 years. Granted it’s already been around for a good while.

25 years is a very long time in our industry Think what about pieces of software from 25 years ago are still maintained and working

> ..software from 25 years ago are still maintained and working

Interesting question. Seem to me that a lot of opensource software from the year 2000 is still being maintained and used. Closed source software? Not as much.

Something to keep in mind when you are looking at software options for your next project.

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