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> but doesn't this whole post completely ignore the 100 ton blue whale in the room? Namely smartphones. This is patently false. Mobile developers do test their
by geezerjay 8y ago
> but doesn't this whole post completely ignore the 100 ton blue whale in the room? Namely smartphones.
This is patently false. Mobile developers do test their apps on smartphones, eventhough google and apple offer VMs. You'd be hard pressed to find a mobile app software house that doesn't have a dozen or so smartphones available to their developers to test and deploy on the real thing.
- nicoburns 8y agoSurely this would be the same for server software: If prod was running on ARM, then you'd probably have your CI server running ARM too. But that wouldn't stop you developing on x86 if that was what was convenient.
- geezerjay 8y ago> Surely this would be the same for server software: If prod was running on ARM, then you'd probably have your CI server running ARM too. CI/CD is already too far ahead in the pipeline to be useful. CI is only a stage where you ensure that whatever you've developed will pass the tests that you already devised, but it's already a stage where you already tested and are convinced that nothing breaks. The type of testing that Linus Torvalds referred to is much back in the pipeline. He is referring to the ability to ramp up a debugger and check if/when something is not working as expected. Developers do not want to deal with bugs that are only triggered somewhere in a CI/CD pipeline, and can't reproduce in their target machines.
- kalleboo 8y agoSo you're saying there are already plenty of ARM devices out there to do testing on?
- geezerjay 8y agoNo, I'm saying that mobile development is also a clear example that developers do want to develop for platforms that they actually can test, which was the point that Linus Torvalds made.