3 ms·

Getting more fragile by the day. An airline that can’t fly planes due to a third-parties weather app. (Which, for all we know, is dependent on other third-part

Getting more fragile by the day. An airline that can’t fly planes due to a third-parties weather app. (Which, for all we know, is dependent on other third-party apps.) These problems will grow exponentially. Just wait until Company A goes offline because it relies on Company B, which goes offline due to Company C, which (and this is where the fun begins...) goes offline because of Company A.

awb 5y ago
If it’s a circular dependency then you still need an external event at some point to bring the system down. I guess what you’re saying is what if the weather app crashes both Southwest and Kayak. And once the weather app goes back online if Southwest and Kayak were both dependent on each other then they couldn’t recover even though the original cause had been resolved.
- lurquer 5y ago
  Yeah. Any number of scenarios. Of course, in the ‘real’ world, these kind of interdependencies exist all the time. The difference is the speed and scale with which these glitches perpetuate. I mean, you had the same issues in the 1800s with a supply chain. But, a lumber mill in Canada that burns down would not have instantly caused houses to collapse in S. Carolina. Nowadays, the problems happen fast. And, with brilliant IT types, the problems get resolved fast. But, boy howdy, I get the feeling — just from reading the angst-ridden accounts from overworked stressed out techs types on HN — that we may be approaching a point where the ‘fixers’ are going to get overwhelmed by the bugs.
wolfgang42 5y ago
In a similar vein, I recall reading an anecdote a couple of years ago about an SMS provider and an alerting company that discovered they had a circular dependency on each other: the SMS company didn’t get paged about their service failing because the alert system couldn’t get any messages through.

awb 5y ago

If it’s a circular dependency then you still need an external event at some point to bring the system down. I guess what you’re saying is what if the weather app crashes both Southwest and Kayak. And once the weather app goes back online if Southwest and Kayak were both dependent on each other then they couldn’t recover even though the original cause had been resolved.

lurquer 5y ago
Yeah. Any number of scenarios. Of course, in the ‘real’ world, these kind of interdependencies exist all the time. The difference is the speed and scale with which these glitches perpetuate. I mean, you had the same issues in the 1800s with a supply chain. But, a lumber mill in Canada that burns down would not have instantly caused houses to collapse in S. Carolina. Nowadays, the problems happen fast. And, with brilliant IT types, the problems get resolved fast. But, boy howdy, I get the feeling — just from reading the angst-ridden accounts from overworked stressed out techs types on HN — that we may be approaching a point where the ‘fixers’ are going to get overwhelmed by the bugs.

wolfgang42 5y ago

In a similar vein, I recall reading an anecdote a couple of years ago about an SMS provider and an alerting company that discovered they had a circular dependency on each other: the SMS company didn’t get paged about their service failing because the alert system couldn’t get any messages through.