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> The obvious conclusion: few of those people you see sitting around typing on their MacBooks are doing anything that will be of value 5, 10, or 20 years from n

> The obvious conclusion: few of those people you see sitting around typing on their MacBooks are doing anything that will be of value 5, 10, or 20 years from now. Maybe to a troll or someone with an axe to grind, but my point of view is different. If you’re doing the same exact thing 5 years later (let alone 10 or even 20) without any tweaks in your process, then frankly you have a job a robot should be doing. I’ve got production code I wrote twenty years ago still up and running, despite multiple upgrades to the language and hosting Infrastucture itself that it’s running on. Should that be the case? Not in my opinion. Business needs change, that code should’ve been updated. Instead developers just added on more around it and that’s how you get bloated beasts like MS Office, Photoshop, etc.

walterstucco666 7y ago
> If you’re doing the same exact thing 5 years later (let alone 10 or even 20) without any tweaks in your process, then frankly you have a job a robot should be doing. Banks and insurance companies tends to disagree with you. Maintaining software is just like maintaining buildings, if you don't they fall apart, but mainly it's just about checking that everything is still the same it was when it was built. You don't change elevators in a building just because the old model is not supported anymore. There's no conceot of "not maintained anymore" for elevators. So maybe the poster was trolling, but it is true that you cannot rely on Macs if your software has a predicted life span longer than a couple of years. > Business needs change Again, many established businesses work because they don't change much over time. They just keep doing what they do best. > that code should’ve been updated. That code worked, why in the hell risking to introduce new bugs? I worked on software packages made by millions of lines, you don't just update them because your supplier won't bother supporting your workflow for at least 10 years. Even Github, a modern fast changing company, was running on Rails 3.2 that was released in 2012 until September 2018, they switched to 5.2 and it took a tech company with some of the smartest engineers around and Rails contributors one year and a half.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
Those are some very naive assumptions you've got there padawan. Sure some software needs to fade away, but just rewriting something to rewrite it is stupid.
lightedman 7y ago
"If you’re doing the same exact thing 5 years later (let alone 10 or even 20) without any tweaks in your process, then frankly you have a job a robot should be doing." Find me a robot that can navigate 4x4 trails and identify rocks with accuracy. None exist. And that kind of prospecting hasn't changed in centuries.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > Find me a robot that can navigate 4x4 trails and identify rocks with accuracy. There's at least one doing so right this very moment on Mars, though it's pretty slow at it.
  - lightedman 7y ago
    That thing is following very carefully-planned paths, not just hunting around of its own volition like a prospector would.

walterstucco666 7y ago

> If you’re doing the same exact thing 5 years later (let alone 10 or even 20) without any tweaks in your process, then frankly you have a job a robot should be doing. Banks and insurance companies tends to disagree with you. Maintaining software is just like maintaining buildings, if you don't they fall apart, but mainly it's just about checking that everything is still the same it was when it was built. You don't change elevators in a building just because the old model is not supported anymore. There's no conceot of "not maintained anymore" for elevators. So maybe the poster was trolling, but it is true that you cannot rely on Macs if your software has a predicted life span longer than a couple of years. > Business needs change Again, many established businesses work because they don't change much over time. They just keep doing what they do best. > that code should’ve been updated. That code worked, why in the hell risking to introduce new bugs? I worked on software packages made by millions of lines, you don't just update them because your supplier won't bother supporting your workflow for at least 10 years. Even Github, a modern fast changing company, was running on Rails 3.2 that was released in 2012 until September 2018, they switched to 5.2 and it took a tech company with some of the smartest engineers around and Rails contributors one year and a half.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

Those are some very naive assumptions you've got there padawan. Sure some software needs to fade away, but just rewriting something to rewrite it is stupid.

lightedman 7y ago

"If you’re doing the same exact thing 5 years later (let alone 10 or even 20) without any tweaks in your process, then frankly you have a job a robot should be doing." Find me a robot that can navigate 4x4 trails and identify rocks with accuracy. None exist. And that kind of prospecting hasn't changed in centuries.

yellowapple 7y ago
> Find me a robot that can navigate 4x4 trails and identify rocks with accuracy. There's at least one doing so right this very moment on Mars, though it's pretty slow at it.
- lightedman 7y ago
  That thing is following very carefully-planned paths, not just hunting around of its own volition like a prospector would.