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Software engineers often have a tendency to look at old code and think, "This is crap. It would be so much better if it was written in (some new popular languag

by Osiris 10y ago

Software engineers often have a tendency to look at old code and think, "This is crap. It would be so much better if it was written in (some new popular language/framework/architecture". What we often fail to see is that if the software works, doing a full ground up rewrite will take considerable effort, and in the end, it'll work pretty much the same as before because of external constraints. It took over 200 years for our country to develop the framework that our society currently enjoys. How long did it take for us to finally decide that slavery is bad, or that woman should be able to vote, or discriminating against people is bad? Those changes in our society happened in an evolutionary way. Restarting the government from scratch may allow us to smooth over some past warts, but how long would it take us to figure things out again? Evolution, not revolution, has always been the best way forward. Just ask people in the Middle East where dictators have been deposed and left a vacuum of power.

k__ 10y ago
Really? When I look at the past, I have the feeling everything stagnated till some special events happend. Revolutions, wars, disasters, etc.
- Osiris 10y ago
  Same sex marriage was very evolutionary. It started slowly with a few states allowing "unions", that spread further, then a few finally passed laws allowing for "marriage". That went to the courts and through that it eventually became legal nationwide. That didn't happen because of a revolution or a war but a slow, evolutionary change.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  That's because history books tend to cover exciting events, and not the daily doldrums of life. Revolution and war typically have long preambles, most of which gets glossed over in favor of the actual event itself. The Cold War was a decades-long preamble that failed to lead to an actual war, and that was far from being stagnant. Society is ever-changing, but often in subtle ways that eventually coalesce to the "big-bang" event written about in history books. Much in the same way as technology -- it took many incremental improvements to many technologies to finally allow Apple to build the iPhone.

by Osiris 10y ago

k__ 10y ago

Really? When I look at the past, I have the feeling everything stagnated till some special events happend. Revolutions, wars, disasters, etc.

Osiris 10y ago
Same sex marriage was very evolutionary. It started slowly with a few states allowing "unions", that spread further, then a few finally passed laws allowing for "marriage". That went to the courts and through that it eventually became legal nationwide. That didn't happen because of a revolution or a war but a slow, evolutionary change.
jdmichal 10y ago
That's because history books tend to cover exciting events, and not the daily doldrums of life. Revolution and war typically have long preambles, most of which gets glossed over in favor of the actual event itself. The Cold War was a decades-long preamble that failed to lead to an actual war, and that was far from being stagnant. Society is ever-changing, but often in subtle ways that eventually coalesce to the "big-bang" event written about in history books. Much in the same way as technology -- it took many incremental improvements to many technologies to finally allow Apple to build the iPhone.