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> ... , we don’t need novel software most of the time. We need better boring software. More general, less buggy, faster. Doesn't producing that kind of softwar
by bool3max 4y ago
> ... , we don’t need novel software most of the time. We need better boring software. More general, less buggy, faster.
Doesn't producing that kind of software involve novel, interesting ideas in the first place?
- jchw 4y agoIt’s only very slightly novel to apply solutions that we already know exist that were designed to solve a class of problems to a problem that nobody has done so for so far. Not being novel doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, though.
- astrange 4y agoI think there's a lot of unexplored territory in wild and crazy ("novel") ideas for software that prevents you from doing wrong stuff, like type systems and model provers, valgrind, ASAN, etc. That leaves room for the software that actually does stuff to be boring. These concepts are usually confused; even in the area of languages that supposedly you can't write bugs in, Haskell is too exciting in both directions (so it's too hard to use), but Ada/SPARK is too boring (so nobody wants to use it).