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Default state is never building it yourself. When you approach new problem, you don't go "ok, let's first start a fire, then melt some silicon to build me some

Default state is never building it yourself. When you approach new problem, you don't go "ok, let's first start a fire, then melt some silicon to build me some transistors". You always start based on something. And as more stuff is moving to be cloud based services, you'll need to build more and more of that stuff yourself. Taking it to the extreme - will CPUs in 30 years be cloud connected and require my service provider to work? Would OS be? Or scheduler? Or terminal? Or dynamic linker for libraries? Or IPC framework? How much of that stuff will companies need to build in the future themselves? It's not like software will get simpler, so they won't need it.

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
Changing your assumption of "default state" doesn't change what I said. The point is that systems like this go through various analyses before being built. Reliance on outside services/components is one of those analyses. Let's say that a critical component is an online service. Someone will do the analysis of what happens when that service goes away. If the outcome is that you can expect to failover to something else with acceptable degradation of performance, then the service might be used. If not, then the choice is find a more reliable service, build it yourself or do without the feature. And those last two choices will themselves be subject to another analysis. One of the nice things about capitalism is that if there's a profitable gap in products/services, that gap will eventually be filled. All new CPUs need to cloud connected and require a service provider, but there's a big industry that can't deal with that? I guarantee that someone will corner that market and start building CPUs that don't need to be cloud connected and require a service provider. Either that, or sufficiently reliable cloud services, tailored to that market, will appear.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  You seem to forget about economy of scale. Sure, void will be filled, but you'll get worse, and more expensive solutions. Economy of scale is ruthless. And this isn't only talking about software you put on the devices. Developer environment is going to degrade even more and more. It's already bad experience to develop stuff for things that need long term support, and with cloud trends, it'll only get worse, as set of tools that you could possibly use will reduce.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
    I've spent basically my entire career working on systems that need long-term support and my experience indicates otherwise.
    - justapassenger 6y ago
      Have you tried working on the other side of the fence? I did work in both areas and differences are huge.

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago

Changing your assumption of "default state" doesn't change what I said. The point is that systems like this go through various analyses before being built. Reliance on outside services/components is one of those analyses. Let's say that a critical component is an online service. Someone will do the analysis of what happens when that service goes away. If the outcome is that you can expect to failover to something else with acceptable degradation of performance, then the service might be used. If not, then the choice is find a more reliable service, build it yourself or do without the feature. And those last two choices will themselves be subject to another analysis. One of the nice things about capitalism is that if there's a profitable gap in products/services, that gap will eventually be filled. All new CPUs need to cloud connected and require a service provider, but there's a big industry that can't deal with that? I guarantee that someone will corner that market and start building CPUs that don't need to be cloud connected and require a service provider. Either that, or sufficiently reliable cloud services, tailored to that market, will appear.

justapassenger 6y ago
You seem to forget about economy of scale. Sure, void will be filled, but you'll get worse, and more expensive solutions. Economy of scale is ruthless. And this isn't only talking about software you put on the devices. Developer environment is going to degrade even more and more. It's already bad experience to develop stuff for things that need long term support, and with cloud trends, it'll only get worse, as set of tools that you could possibly use will reduce.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  I've spent basically my entire career working on systems that need long-term support and my experience indicates otherwise.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    Have you tried working on the other side of the fence? I did work in both areas and differences are huge.