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If you don't keep your software update you end up trying to write AVX2 instructions on systems in which the debuggers or analysis tools don't understand them.
by Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
If you don't keep your software update you end up trying to write AVX2 instructions on systems in which the debuggers or analysis tools don't understand them. Or the same but newer with AVX512.
Unfortunately updating also means you get people like Debian which patch bugs into the software they distribute; which isn't really updated. The SSL or SSH key bug from something like 10 years ago and the memory leak in Transmission much more recently.
I am certainly for never updating when you think you have a working system. I am experienced regret after updating my desktop the time I managed 100+ days of uptime. So many pieces of software are worse since.
- madamelic 3y agoI think there is and should be a middle ground between "cutting edge" and "never update". You should certainly lock semvar versions (I don't mean lock to major, I mean 100% lock to a specific version) but you should routinely audit and update. I've worked on both ends and they are honestly both terrible. If you don't update fast enough, you build up kludge where it becomes difficult to get onto LTS. If you update too fast, you are constantly putting out fires with everything being in scope as a possible problem. I think every 6 months is fast enough without having it be breaking changes. It gives the version time to mature while you continue working on features. It's a lot easier to work off a stable platform where most of the time you can ignore pre-existing dependencies having breaking issues. In software engineering, the goal is to solve problems not create them and I think a lot of engineers, especially the more junior, have their head too far into "must have best-i-est system evur w/ latest features" rather than "stable platform to solve problems from".