4 ms·

Stage 4. Acknowledge that your stuff (and software in general) is now and always buggy somewhere cause it's just too complex for humans to write correctly and w

Stage 4. Acknowledge that your stuff (and software in general) is now and always buggy somewhere cause it's just too complex for humans to write correctly and whatever your efforts it will just malfunction. State 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change. Stage 6. Get someone else do it for you. Like the silly enthusiastic junior dev who is willing to sacrifice his weekend for some stupid problem. Stage 7. Switch career to something sensible such as a baker.

perlgeek 10y ago
> State 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change. State 6. Realize that painful steps need to be automated and repeated often. Then each upgrade has much fewer changes, and it's easier to locate the source of errors.
- vacri 10y ago
  I'll second this. At one of the places I currently work at, we have the same codebase split between nodejs 0.10.40 and node 6.2.something, because the devs were scared of the incremental changes and having to fix small things along the way. It's a nightmare now, and transitioning the final stuff off is proving to be a massive wallop of tech debt. If you have a team that's actively working on the code, incremental upgrades to the dependencies should be pretty comfortable. But if you've got some legacy thing that no-one really knows, then is the time to start being careful about updating little bits.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    I once worked with a CIO that had a policy that we should be no more than one version behind current on software. The idea was that most vendors will have an easy migration plan to current, but beyond that you usually had to upgrade twice with all the attendant pain. It's not fun, but as a consequence you don't get stuck with something that you absolutely can't maintain.
alexbeloi 10y ago
1c1 < State 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change. --- > Stage 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  You might want to upgrade patch, it is creating spurious diffs.
  - jholman 10y ago
    Fourth letter of the line.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Oh, I see it now.

perlgeek 10y ago

> State 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change. State 6. Realize that painful steps need to be automated and repeated often. Then each upgrade has much fewer changes, and it's easier to locate the source of errors.

vacri 10y ago
I'll second this. At one of the places I currently work at, we have the same codebase split between nodejs 0.10.40 and node 6.2.something, because the devs were scared of the incremental changes and having to fix small things along the way. It's a nightmare now, and transitioning the final stuff off is proving to be a massive wallop of tech debt. If you have a team that's actively working on the code, incremental upgrades to the dependencies should be pretty comfortable. But if you've got some legacy thing that no-one really knows, then is the time to start being careful about updating little bits.
- coredog64 10y ago
  I once worked with a CIO that had a policy that we should be no more than one version behind current on software. The idea was that most vendors will have an easy migration plan to current, but beyond that you usually had to upgrade twice with all the attendant pain. It's not fun, but as a consequence you don't get stuck with something that you absolutely can't maintain.

alexbeloi 10y ago

1c1 < State 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change. --- > Stage 5. Never change anything or do any useless activities or upgrades unless you really have no other choice and there's clear demonstrated value in the change.

marcosdumay 10y ago
You might want to upgrade patch, it is creating spurious diffs.
- jholman 10y ago
  Fourth letter of the line.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Oh, I see it now.