Why cant they just improve what they have instead of re-writting it every X years and introducing new bugs?
Because that method has it's own problems too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot
Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
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Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#72Why cant they just improve what they have instead of re-writting it every X years and introducing new bugs?
Because that method has it's own problems too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#73Why cant they just improve what they have instead of re-writting it every X years and introducing new bugs?
Because that method has it's own problems too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#74I think greater compartmentalization of software is long overdue.
For a program like this, there ought to be a Sacred Core that Does Very Little and has implementations of key protocols that can’t be touched without the blessing of about 5 senior engineers and the personal seal of the CEO or some such.
In other words, it should be unbelievably hard to screw with parts of the program that are crucial, while making changes that shouldn’t have anything to do with it. (Heck, for all we know, they were adding Windows 10 Tiles™ when this screw-up occurred.)
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#75The widespread use of POP (well, any significant use of POP) is what makes me sad the most.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is horrifying indeed. I cannot imagine any reason to go on using VSS other than a very, very robust aversion to learning anything new. And yes, VSS is very buggy, although the bugs might not show up for a single-user environment always following the happy path.
I've used git on several hosts and subversion back in the day. I have no problem learning new things. Tortoise, bitbucket, github, beanstalk to name a few. I think your reaction is more horrifying than me not having a compelling reason to change the way I've been doing things without flaw for decades.
I'm not trying to be mean. If one is going to stick with an obsolete source control system--as an important part of one's work process--there should be a good reason for doing so; however, one cannot make such a justification based on ignorance of the alternatives unless the two hours to learn, e.g., git, cannot be spared and would not be recouped in future productivity.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#77I think greater compartmentalization of software is long overdue. For a program like this, there ought to be a Sacred Core that Does Very Little and has implementations of key protocols that can’t be touched without the blessing of about 5 senior engineers and the personal seal of the CEO or some such. In other words, it should be unbelievably hard to screw with parts of the program that are crucial, while making cha…
Microsoft keep rewriting their mail protocol implementations and fucking them up in new ways.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm genuinely surprised Microsoft allows disabling of those automatic updates...
Their enterprise customers would rebel if that was not allowed.
Well, they can make a more expensive / difficult to get (for an individual) version, similarly to how it works with Windows 10.
Re: Outlook 2016’s New POP3 Bug Deletes Your Emails
#79From a client standpoint, POP is not actually trivial. The main problem with POP is that unless you do something clever, determining the changes in the mailbox from time t0 to time t1 is both conceptually difficult and computationally expensive. This is because generic POP has no concept of a message UID, so there's no principled way to diff between states. In a very real sense, this means that POP is somewhat broken…
> POP is somewhat broken for the most important use case for the client: syncing to server changes.
That's why we've had IMAP for a couple of decades now (and available anywhere for over a decade). POP simply wasn't designed for this use case.