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I've been thinking through this for a while now and I've come to the conclusion that the details keep getting more complicated faster than other things can auto

I've been thinking through this for a while now and I've come to the conclusion that the details keep getting more complicated faster than other things can automate them. For example, I remember a time when software served ascii and when the Canadian government asked to buy a version of some software we were writing for the Americans the reason the head of the company said no was because we'd have to support French and that meant non-ascii characters. Now, UTF-8 is a given and there is a mess of potential issues. No longer are byte-by-byte comparisons reliable, especially in some languages like Vietnamese. Your example of IP connection and network connection is true, but overall connections are more complicated. Some clients can't use HTTP2, some clients are behind firewalls, some clients need CORS support, etc. And plus there is this accelerating wave of advancements everyone is trying to keep up with, but that come with real investment. Upgrading OSes, programming languages, frameworks, libraries. Figuring out how to keep data secure. I really don't see things getting less complicated as time goes on. At least not until we have some real form of AI, but even there I have my doubts because there will always be tradeoffs.

bobthepanda 7y ago
That's why we have libraries and frameworks to do complicated, human-facing bits. If you're rolling your own dateTime, it's a bad idea, but fortunately other people have solutions for this. If you want to get into the nitty gritty you can but you do so at your own peril, similar to how the vast majority of people are not reinventing TCP/IP. It'll take a bit of evolution to get there depending on how new the problem is, but it also took a bit of evolution to get where we are today, and nothing is ever perfect.
- 3pt14159 7y ago
  My argument is that, as a function of time, there are more things to consider, not less. Abstraction works to a point, but it doesn't keep up with the growing complexity.
- nradov 7y ago
  Except by the time those libraries and frameworks become stable and well documented enough for serious use, we decide to reinvent the wheel and move on to something new.

bobthepanda 7y ago

That's why we have libraries and frameworks to do complicated, human-facing bits. If you're rolling your own dateTime, it's a bad idea, but fortunately other people have solutions for this. If you want to get into the nitty gritty you can but you do so at your own peril, similar to how the vast majority of people are not reinventing TCP/IP. It'll take a bit of evolution to get there depending on how new the problem is, but it also took a bit of evolution to get where we are today, and nothing is ever perfect.

3pt14159 7y ago
My argument is that, as a function of time, there are more things to consider, not less. Abstraction works to a point, but it doesn't keep up with the growing complexity.
nradov 7y ago
Except by the time those libraries and frameworks become stable and well documented enough for serious use, we decide to reinvent the wheel and move on to something new.