maybe nullupdates should be a thing.
Why the Update Fever Is Bad
31–40 of 112 posts
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#32maybe nullupdates should be a thing.
For anyone thinking about doing this, here are some free release note templates:
"Bug fixes and stability improvements"
"Thank you for using ! For your benefit, we update continuously. Every updates for potentially includes new features, bug fixes and other improvements. Don't hesitate to reach out to noreply@app.com if you have any questions or suggestions."
"Bedankt dat je gebruikt! Bij het invullen van de releasenotes heeft onze stagiair niet opgelet en per ongeluk de verkeerde taal geplakt. Geen probleem. We hopen dat je van deze nieuwe versie geniet!"
(For the longest time, the Dutch Facebook Messenger app had release notes in some Scandinavian language.)
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#33Glad to see this being written. "Trained" is the word I have thought of many times as well. It is perplexing to see people wanting updates. It is possible to write finished programs that are bug-free[FN1]. But when eternal rounds of patching becomes a religion, what sort of standard are developers promoting? Every program is expected to have security holes that will need to be patched? What about not releasing softwa…
> There is such a thing as finished software. With no major bugs. That does not need constant updates. The general attitude (both on HN and elsewhere) is that if any security update exists for a product you use then you are a complete moron not to update it immediately. There is virtually no acknowledgment of any nuance on the topic in my experience.
Not applying a security update is willingly leaving a known security hole in place. At best, you are making your system insecure, and at worst, you are putting others on your network and/or in your social circles at risk.
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#34I 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.
I'm sure cybercriminals are very thankful for people like you. Are you also still running Windows XP, because newer versions slow down your computer which "was perfectly fast and great at the time"?
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thus wasting other people's time and productivity? I'm using the Atom editor. It's kind of annoying how it pushes new updates every week. Previously used Subline Text 2 which just worked and did not have an update for years.
Sublime is a great example of users getting update fever. The forum is riddled with long ”is this software dead?” threads that pop up at regular intervals.
Eventually it will be, if they stop updating it. Atom and visual studio code are overtaking it.
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#36Software updates are a kind of project heartbeat. The content of them is less important than the signal, "this project is still alive, and maintainers are fixing issues for people". If a project does not put out updates, then users may (understandably) worry that if they have an issue, it won't get addressed promptly. I actually don't think there is anything wrong with having time-based releases, and putting very lit…
But on the other hand, if the software is stable and no longer needs updating why force small inconsequential changes just to appear to be maintained? Just release when there's something to release.
There is no software without bugs.
People seem to know that. Developers sometimes do not.
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#37Glad to see this being written. "Trained" is the word I have thought of many times as well. It is perplexing to see people wanting updates. It is possible to write finished programs that are bug-free[FN1]. But when eternal rounds of patching becomes a religion, what sort of standard are developers promoting? Every program is expected to have security holes that will need to be patched? What about not releasing softwa…
All software has bugs.
There is no such thing as finished software.
The size of a bug is in the eye of the beholder.
Sorry for the Shellshock.
Edit, took me two seconds to find: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=502651. Just as response to http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/guarantee.html
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#38maybe nullupdates should be a thing.
For anyone thinking about doing this, here are some free release note templates: "Bug fixes and stability improvements" "Thank you for using ! For your benefit, we update continuously. Every updates for potentially includes new features, bug fixes and other improvements. Don't hesitate to reach out to noreply@ app.com if you have any questions or suggestions." "Bedankt dat je gebruikt! Bij het invullen van de release…
A lot of popular iOS apps are doing this, which I personally find extremely annoying.
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#39With such a huge spectrum of kind of software, what applies in one kind won't necessarily be so for another.
The heartbeat argument is an obvious case. It's the same reason people look at the UI "chrome" in the screenshots in Android Play Store - if the battery indicator is from Eclair it doesn't built confidence it'll work in Nougat!
But that may apply less to a more minimalist utility (eg a command line tool)
Merely to update it so that you formally confirm that this version was tested on newer systems may be valid in some cases (although one could merely update documentation in many cases for that).
And then there is the dependency argument. Where a tool directly contains underlying packages, it builds confidence the developer won't get stuck too far behind current(ish) versions (with the greater risk of it becoming abandonware). Where the dependencies are external (ie up to the user to have installed) you do not want to be stuck on some old version, as other tools may move on, even if this super-stable software doesn't feel the need.
Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
But on the other hand, if the software is stable and no longer needs updating why force small inconsequential changes just to appear to be maintained? Just release when there's something to release.
There is no software without bugs. People seem to know that. Developers sometimes do not.
There are projects that are close to bugfree, though. You can use a 3 year old version of sqlite without any difficulty. I don't know what version of "ls" or "mkdir" my machine runs, but I never worry about these simple utilities being out of date or behaving differently in release/staging. These utilities are essentially done, and 30 years from now they'll still work fine.
There is no software without bugs in the same sense that there exists no hardware that cannot fail. But you can create software that is so close to perfect that hardware failures outnumber software failures 100:1, so there is no point in pursuing perfection any further.