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Why the Update Fever Is Bad

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Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#41

Post by taneq »

frik wrote: post #7

Show them somehow it is still supported, update the minor version or something. In general: If I come across a 3 year old binary, and no news article about dev activity it looks "dead and unsupported". Also on GitHub, if there is no commit for 1+ year, it looks "dead and unsupported", piling up of Github issues is also a bad sign. Using "dead" binary asks for troubles down roads, when you want to use it in a few mont…

Binaries (without external runtime dependencies) generally don't just "stop working" like that unless you change something significant about your system.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#42

Post by MrQuincle »

gizmo wrote: post #40
MrQuincle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 I don't know what version of "ls" or "mkdir" my machine runs, but I never worry about these simple utilities being out of date or behaving differently in release/staging.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 sa…

I've had enough of small utilities that didn't work as expected. Also ls or mkdir can for example be part of busybox ported to a Blackfin. No guarantees that there are no bugs in these by far!

Edit: here you have the source code for the "small" ls utility: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/ls.c. Yes, over 5000 lines.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#43

Post by awinder »

A lot of commenters have keyed into the product heartbeat line. Shipping updates is one common signals of a healthy product but it’s not the only one. If your product has non-user-facing changes, you should try to make noise about what other people are actively building or doing with your product. Or if you’re offering a service, market reliability and put time into showing stability and educating customers on why they should trust that they can build with you. You should also be working on acquiring customers if your product is in that phase. Realistically you’re talking about a product that requires little to no maintenance for existing customers which should free you up to spend time getting more customers.

Any of the above is going to realistically create feature work as you work with new customers or users and find further areas for completing your product offering.

Word of caution — this work will never realistically end, or you will end. There is no end state to software. Software is the tool, the product is your user or customer community and the problems you solve together. If you’re looking to build software as an end state, I see obvious problems, and your customers do too.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#44

Post by gizmo »

MrQuincle wrote: post #42
gizmo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

I've had enough of small utilities that didn't work as expected. Also ls or mkdir can for example be part of busybox ported to a Blackfin. No guarantees that there are no bugs in these by far! Edit: here you have the source code for the "small" ls utility: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/ls.c . Yes, over 5000 lines.

Your claim was that "there is no software without bugs". I'm pointing out that this is true only in the narrow philosophical sense. You cannot draw a perfect circle, either. But you can draw a circle that gets pretty damn close.

Software cannot be perfect but this doesn't mean that software needs to be shoddy. sqlite is a complex product and it has orders of magnitude fewer bugs than other projects of similar complexity.

It is factually, observably, possible to create software that is very close to perfect, it just takes a lot of hard work. Software has a reputation for being buggy not because it's impossible to write flawless software, but because most software is really poorly written.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#45

Post by digi_owl »

tjoff wrote: post #23
chii wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

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.

Never mind when an update is effectively a rewrite that strips out features/behaviors someone, somewhere, relied upon.

This duality of updates is why people avoid updating.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#46

Post by milesvp »

MrQuincle wrote: post #37
feelin_googley wrote: post #4

Glad 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

You may be missing the point if the post. Good software asymptotically aproaches bug free over time. Meaning it should require fewer and fewer updates less and less frequently. But reduced frequency of updates is percieved as death of software, and this is actually a problem. I even see it in developers who use it as a metric when choosing frameworks and libraries which is a mistake for older software.

I saw a study done on github where the author wanted to know what languages had the smallest open bug count, and found unexpectedly that c and c++, which are notoriously bug inducing languages, had some of the lowest bug rates of all the languages. His conclusion was that the low bug count was actually due to the languages being used for foudational work, libraries and drivers and such, basically reaffirming the 'many eyes make shallow bugs' adage.

The better metric for if software is no longer being maintained is how responsive is the maintainer to their mailing list/support channel. Regularly seeing requests going unanswered is also likely to show that any updates that happen are also likely ignoring actual user needs.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#47

Post by digi_owl »

muzani wrote: post #21
chii wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

Software is very rarely perfect though. There are some rare cases like Winamp and Photoshop where there's just not much to add. I do find projects like Dwarf Fortress very charming in that there's an endless supply of new things to look forward to.

DF is also unlikely to be critical to someones workflow or similar.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#48

Post by digi_owl »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #15
throwaway613834 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think this is what people officially say, because this is the "right" thing to do, and in general it makes sense. But in real life things are different. I had to support many ancient systems with no security updates for years or even decades now. For some of them some updates were available, but we didn't even have the hardware to test them on. Yes, we were gradually moving many older parts to newer systems. Nevert…

In other words, people are "virtue signaling"...

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#49

Post by digi_owl »

jodrellblank wrote: post #26

This doesn't say much about why it's bad. Colin Percival wrote a more detailed piece on updates, their problems and considerations here: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2017-06-14-oil-changes-safet... and suggests separate channels for 'updates' vs. 'security fixes'. This is something new for Microsoft: Usually they won't break their own old software with updates, they are known for keeping up backwards compatibility…

New things are fun when you are young. As you grow older you learn to appreciate stable reliable behavior.

Re: Why the Update Fever Is Bad

#50

Post by digi_owl »

mizaru wrote: post #38
sjmulder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So many big apps (including some from Google themselves) have such a line permanently bolted to them over at Android as well.
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