Software obsoleting faster than hardware

Software obsoleting faster than hardware(psankar.blogspot.com)

12 points by psankar 4 years ago | 6 comments

JohnFen 4 years ago |

It's not just a Slack issue, it's a general thing.

This puts the finger on one of the main reasons that I'm very concerned about the general state of software engineering these days. It's a lack of quality and stability.

Well, that's a little unfair. It's really that the industry is making a fundamental engineering tradeoff that I think is a terrible mistake: prioritizing rapid adaptation over robustness. We as an industry have decided that software should be ephemeral and disposable.

There are arguments for why that's a good tradeoff. We've been hearing them for years, and I was reasonably on board with the notion at the start (at least for some use cases). But I think that now that we've had experience with the results, my opinion has changed. I no longer think that the tradeoff is the best one.

noir_lord 4 years ago | |

I'm old enough to remember when we used to have prototypes and production.

Now it feels like we just have the prototypes in production.

adminscoffee 4 years ago | |

i think what happens is that things are 1. changing at a rapid pace and other things are just hype. i've switched or tested out newer languages and some were fun but, they didn't last because the trend died or they were bought out by facebook or some other tech firm and crashed. i've come to that keeping an eye out but not jumping ship until things look like the better option for certain. robustness plays a large part of my decision making these days. can it stack up to the weight etc

partido3619463 4 years ago |

Feels like onus should be on phone manufacturers to ensure new OS updates work on old hardware.

Instead, Xiaomi should release an operating system update. iOS 15 is compatible back to 6s (released in 2015), tho even 6 years of support seems short.

If you want to “BuyItForLife”, perhaps buy from a phone manufacturer committed to supporting OS updates for your phone.

What’s going on with Android ecosystem that old phone support is hard?

noir_lord 4 years ago | |

> What’s going on with Android ecosystem that old phone support is hard?

It's not a single thing it's a bunch of things on the list of which is.

Hardware manufacturers customised android for their handsets meaning that updates are only viable from them, they only care about 18mths after they stop making a model.

Google in wanting everyone to use their handsets let them get away with pulling stuff like above - android didn't win because it was technically better it won because it was "free" and "made" by Google.

Shitty drivers.

Once Google had the market mostly sown up they did circle back and attempt to fix this with AndroidOne https://www.android.com/intl/en_uk/one/ which attempts to establish a baseline compatibility so that you do get updates for longer.

I won't buy a phone that isn't AndroidOne at this point full stop.

mikewarot 4 years ago |

I expect the pushback on this to force change in how we deal with source code ownership and maintenance of software.

It would be nice if it didn't involve the government, but I fear it's going to end up as the necessary evil.