4 ms·

There are shockingly few people maintaining the video encoding packages that most people rely on. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ makes me think

There are shockingly few people maintaining the video encoding packages that most people rely on. https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ makes me think the same is true of image software as well. I'm pretty sure there's a timezone database that's maintained by two guys and literally everything depends on it to get timezones right. When I was at Microsoft ~10 years ago there was a single guy who truly understood how tables in Word worked. I'm sure they've fixed it by now but back then if you wanted to touch the tables code in Word you had to talk to the tables guy to make sure you wouldn't break everything. If I remember correctly there's a lot of low level networking code that's basically in this state. I think ntp is maintained by a single person. Curl was written by a single person, not sure who maintains it. Tons of stuff in the geospatial world is owned and maintained by surprisingly few people like proj and gdal. I'm almost certain I saw something about all GPS code in the world relying on a package maintained by a single person.

mtoner23 4y ago
I wonder if this is actually a more efficient way to run things than every company implementing timezones/tables/curl themselves for each of their needs. current situation isnt ideal but not horrible.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It often is the better way, because you have ONE implementation that everyone uses (even if it might be wrong at some point) vs multiple implementations that are all subtly different and never align.
- jldugger 4y ago
  It is, but also its kinda concerning that some CS faculty member does this as a hobby[1]. [1]: https://samueli.ucla.edu/time-zone-king-how-one-ucla-computer-scientist-keeps-digital-clocks-ticking/ https://samueli.ucla.edu/time-zone-king-how-one-ucla-compute...
  - manquer 4y ago
    Still is better than some big corp distinguished engineer equivalent doing it in his free time. The CS prof probably has tenure , a lot of freedom on what he works on, never ending supply of TAs and students and can choose when he retires .
    - jldugger 4y ago
      afaict, they're a "senior lecturer" not a tenure track faculty member.
onion2k 4y ago
, When I was at Microsoft ~10 years ago there was a single guy who truly understood how tables in Word worked. I'm sure they've fixed it by now but back then if you wanted to touch the tables code in Word you had to talk to the tables guy to make sure you wouldn't break everything.* Every business I've worked in over the past twenty years have two things in common - one person who knows a key piece of thetechnology, and there's a woeful lack of documentation around processes and understanding. There's often reasonably good code docs, but that only ever tells you what the code is trying to do; it doesn't tell you why the code exists in the first place, or what the code should do. If you ever need to check the code is correct there's rarely any resources apart from that one person. In the worst cases that person left a few years before. I've become quite good at technical writing because I always end up establishing a project to fix the docs.
- jakub_g 4y ago
  > it doesn't tell you why the code exists in the first place, or what the code should do This is one of the worst things in most codebases I see. Today I was told to use function X to solve my problem. Checked: 0 docs on what it does and why/how; although used extensively in the codebase. Read existing code and try to infer it, every damned time.
jakub_g 4y ago
There are some bugs in browsers that are decades old and they do not get fixed, precisely because of this IMO - no one knows part X of codebase anymore, learning it would take weeks, as it's probably written in idiomatic C++ from 2003 :) and there are other priorities (mostly shipping new stuff).

mtoner23 4y ago

I wonder if this is actually a more efficient way to run things than every company implementing timezones/tables/curl themselves for each of their needs. current situation isnt ideal but not horrible.

bombcar 4y ago
It often is the better way, because you have ONE implementation that everyone uses (even if it might be wrong at some point) vs multiple implementations that are all subtly different and never align.
jldugger 4y ago
It is, but also its kinda concerning that some CS faculty member does this as a hobby[1]. [1]: https://samueli.ucla.edu/time-zone-king-how-one-ucla-computer-scientist-keeps-digital-clocks-ticking/ https://samueli.ucla.edu/time-zone-king-how-one-ucla-compute...
- manquer 4y ago
  Still is better than some big corp distinguished engineer equivalent doing it in his free time. The CS prof probably has tenure , a lot of freedom on what he works on, never ending supply of TAs and students and can choose when he retires .
  - jldugger 4y ago
    afaict, they're a "senior lecturer" not a tenure track faculty member.

onion2k 4y ago

, When I was at Microsoft ~10 years ago there was a single guy who truly understood how tables in Word worked. I'm sure they've fixed it by now but back then if you wanted to touch the tables code in Word you had to talk to the tables guy to make sure you wouldn't break everything.* Every business I've worked in over the past twenty years have two things in common - one person who knows a key piece of thetechnology, and there's a woeful lack of documentation around processes and understanding. There's often reasonably good code docs, but that only ever tells you what the code is trying to do; it doesn't tell you why the code exists in the first place, or what the code should do. If you ever need to check the code is correct there's rarely any resources apart from that one person. In the worst cases that person left a few years before. I've become quite good at technical writing because I always end up establishing a project to fix the docs.

jakub_g 4y ago
> it doesn't tell you why the code exists in the first place, or what the code should do This is one of the worst things in most codebases I see. Today I was told to use function X to solve my problem. Checked: 0 docs on what it does and why/how; although used extensively in the codebase. Read existing code and try to infer it, every damned time.

jakub_g 4y ago

There are some bugs in browsers that are decades old and they do not get fixed, precisely because of this IMO - no one knows part X of codebase anymore, learning it would take weeks, as it's probably written in idiomatic C++ from 2003 :) and there are other priorities (mostly shipping new stuff).