5 ms·
I've never understood the appeal of hot-patching and full process image save and restore. Yes, this technology is neat for some use cases, but as a fundamental
by atq2119 7y ago
I've never understood the appeal of hot-patching and full process image save and restore. Yes, this technology is neat for some use cases, but as a fundamental way of computing it's broken, because it throws reproducibility out of the window. Reproducibility is everything in complex systems, and being able to reset and start fresh is powerful.
Evolution figured that out as well. It's why basically all species propagate via the birth of new individuals and the death of the old ones.
- heisenbit 7y agoAs soon as one works on a non-trivial piece of software and has a team >2 SCM becomes important. There was one SCM system for PP Smalltalk if memory serves right called Envy but it was quite expensive. But even more important than SCM is a module/library eco system. We can’t trade without reproducibility. Without it we are destined to re-invent the wheel. There is value in reinventing wheel - it is entertaining and stress free - as it does not matter for anyone but yourself.
- zozbot234 7y agoYou always have a team >2, unless you're just writing a quick throwaway hack. Your future selves are members of the team, and there might be quite a few of them over time as you simply forget what you were working on earlier.
- smabie 7y agoThere’s no reason why you couldn’t have an image based system that also supported versioned images. Then you wouldn’t need any source code at all and still rollback changes.
- xkriva11 7y agoYou can have the best of both worlds. In some Smalltalks (like Pharo), the image is bootstrapped from the source code but you can still use image persistency.