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Unmanaged Complexity: Software
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Software is so bad because it’s so complex, and because it’s trying to talk to other programs on the same computer, or over connections to other computers. Even your computer is kind of more than one computer, boxes within boxes, and each one of those computers is full of little programs trying to coordinate their actions and talk to each other. Computers have gotten incredibly complex, while people have remained the same gray mud with pretensions of godhood.

    Your average piece-of-shit Windows desktop is so complex that no one person on Earth really knows what all of it is doing, or how

    https://medium.com/message/81e5f33a24e1

  • 12 Replies sorted by
  • brianlbrianl

    Good article.

  • lenuisiblelenuisible

    Yep, and entertaining.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Sony Pictures Entertainment made its first substantive comments about the devastating hacking attack against it last month, calling the effort “unprecedented in nature,” and an “unparalleled crime” carried out by “an organized group.”

    http://recode.net/2014/12/07/sony-describes-hack-attack-as-unprecedented/

    May be, but I am certain that this guys do not understand how their own network and software works.

  • andyharrisandyharris

    First Article -- Very good, rings so true with my own experiences.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    This AD requires a repetitive maintenance task for electrical power deactivation on Model 787 airplanes. This AD was prompted by the determination that a Model 787 airplane that has been powered continuously for 248 days can lose all alternating current (AC) electrical power due to the generator control units (GCUs) simultaneously going into failsafe mod

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2015-10066.pdf

    Overflow error :-)

  • Adam_MercierAdam_Mercier

    Soon (if not already) our dervices will become terminals only.

    I've been doing Cad work for pro and personnal projects on Solid Edge (400usd/mo package), Catia, NX and Solidworks for a few years.

    I've recently been trying Onshape browser based free CAD package and I've been amazed by the ease of use and fluidity!

    I've totally forgot that the thing runs in my browser, and both ease of use and fluidity are better than the Solid Edge dinausaur, not even talking about online saving, versioning and collaboration tools.

    Some article on the thing : http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/09/onshape-launches-mother-of-all-products/

    Something I've been working on and interface :

    image

    I also tested other free cloud based CAD package form Autodesk (fusion 360) but it was trying too hard to bridge between CAD and design uses, at least for me.

    Of course some features are still missing in Onshape but I feel like they "got it right", this is rare enough to be noted. Now is the time they can fuck it up by not releasing the proper drawing module they have been promising.

    Onshape.png
    1600 x 862 - 422K
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @Adam_Mercier

    It is cool, just topic is not right for post.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Remember that stuff about crazy people and bad code? The internet is that except it's literally a billion times worse. Websites that are glorified shopping carts with maybe three dynamic pages are maintained by teams of people around the clock, because the truth is everything is breaking all the time, everywhere, for everyone. Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses. There's a team at a Google office that hasn't slept in three days. Somewhere there's a database programmer surrounded by empty Mountain Dew bottles whose husband thinks she's dead. And if these people stop, the world burns. Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.

    http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/programming-sucks/

  • ChaosCloudChaosCloud

    Software under continuous development has a lifecycle. It is originated by a few people with talent and motivation. Eventually those developers lose interest and move on. This is the "peak" of development. They are replaced by the less talented and less motivated, and there are more of them. They spend their time implementing half-baked ideas and superficial GUI rubbish (often management driven). Since they don't know the original code well, as they proceed with development they break as much as they fix. The software becomes bloated, slow, and unstable. The more people get their paws on it, the worse it gets.

    It's at the point now where the new software on a new computer runs slower than the old software running on the old computer (since the improvement of hardware has slowed, but the bloating has not )

    Examples of software that I'm familiar with: Photoshop: Peaked at 7.0 AutoCAD: Peaked at 2007/2008 MS Office: Peaked at 2003 Windows: Peaked at XP (maybe even 2000)

    The best quality software I have used is typically developed by a single author. Of course, these programs are relatively small, since there's a limit to how much a single person can manage and remember.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    The best quality software I have used is typically developed by a single author. Of course, these programs are relatively small, since there's a limit to how much a single person can manage and remember.

    Absolutely true. Single author or small team of very advanced developers.

    Btw, it is fully natural thing, as our communication interface between people is quite new and very bad. Yet our internal brain is very advanced and very old.

  • robertGLrobertGL

    I wish I didn't drop computer science class in college, but it seems like the best time to begin learning coding is around your 6th birthday!

  • brianlbrianl

    I don't know how to write software. But is it like writing a nice tight story and then after publishing, you decide to add new characters and plot twists that aren't necessary? The story bloats and loses energy and efficiency. Is it like that?

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