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I'll bite! We used to ship software, on discs, and we didn't have the Internet to update it. There is plenty of software out there that works via your linux d

I'll bite! We used to ship software, on discs, and we didn't have the Internet to update it. There is plenty of software out there that works via your linux distress package manager. Note that this isn't everything you can get from your package manager. Plenty of things that are available are broken or miersable to get working unless you get the container/vm version.

tomcam 4y ago
I remember those days well. It really meant you had to be careful with bugs and documentation. It is not clear to me that the we are winning with daily or multiple times daily release schedules at this point.
- jrockway 4y ago
  Were people careful with bugs and documentation? I remember the Internet blowing up one day because every Windows install was sending every IP on the Internet a virus, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. (And yes, Unix also had similar worms, though they largely predate me!) Word used to crash and corrupt your entire novel. There was no online banking. I'm not sure the rose-colored glasses are a realistic take on changing software quality. Today, the tools are available to move quickly and maintain quality. You probably do what was months of manual testing every time you save a file, and certainly every time you commit a set of changes. There are fuzz testers to find the craziest bugs that no human could even imagine. There are robots that read your PR and point out common errors. HN really likes to pan on software quality, but "I don't like this feature" is not a bug per se, just a company you don't like. There are a lot of those, but there are more lines of code than ever, and a lot more stuff works than 30 years ago. I think we, as a field, are getting better.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    I ran a software company that predated the web. Yes, we were incredibly careful. When you ran the risk of having to send out updates on disks QC was a big thing.

tomcam 4y ago

I remember those days well. It really meant you had to be careful with bugs and documentation. It is not clear to me that the we are winning with daily or multiple times daily release schedules at this point.

jrockway 4y ago
Were people careful with bugs and documentation? I remember the Internet blowing up one day because every Windows install was sending every IP on the Internet a virus, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. (And yes, Unix also had similar worms, though they largely predate me!) Word used to crash and corrupt your entire novel. There was no online banking. I'm not sure the rose-colored glasses are a realistic take on changing software quality. Today, the tools are available to move quickly and maintain quality. You probably do what was months of manual testing every time you save a file, and certainly every time you commit a set of changes. There are fuzz testers to find the craziest bugs that no human could even imagine. There are robots that read your PR and point out common errors. HN really likes to pan on software quality, but "I don't like this feature" is not a bug per se, just a company you don't like. There are a lot of those, but there are more lines of code than ever, and a lot more stuff works than 30 years ago. I think we, as a field, are getting better.
- tomcam 4y ago
  I ran a software company that predated the web. Yes, we were incredibly careful. When you ran the risk of having to send out updates on disks QC was a big thing.