I like this post from Dave Rupert on lessons from old Russian small nuclear generators:
I wonder if software has a kind of digital entropy, where even good software left untouched for a short timeframe rots and stops working.
I like this post from Dave Rupert on lessons from old Russian small nuclear generators:
I wonder if software has a kind of digital entropy, where even good software left untouched for a short timeframe rots and stops working.
@manton I have observed that behaviour so many times. Especially with Xcode projects :-( You just need to touch them constantly to prevent it.
@numist Which for sure it has - and be it a particular operating system it builds upon. The more dependencies, the worse.
@numist (So no software without dependencies. That pretty much explains what we see all around us.π)
@manton Entropy rate is language-dependent. I have Fortran codes from 50 years ago that compile and run with little or no modification, I have Python code from 5-10 years ago that won't run today without a major overhaul.
@numist Maybe... yet I'm unsure whether this has a real "reason" or is just similar to a lot of people in my environment falling back again to film photography or writing texts on a typewriter as some odd kind of fake "digital minimalism". But maybe I'm too bitter here.π