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lovely article aside from this bit: > while those written for e.g. Linux will likely cease working in a decade or two there's nothing to support this claim in

by nektro 1y ago

lovely article aside from this bit: > while those written for e.g. Linux will likely cease working in a decade or two there's nothing to support this claim in practice. linux is incredibly stable

ajuc 1y ago
I also noticed this part of the article but for the oposite reason (I think 10-20 years is overly optimistic). I've written a small 2d game for Linux back in 00s. Using C++, SDL and a few other libraries (for example now-abandoned libparagui for GUI). Any time I tried to run it afterwards - I had to recompile it, and a few times I had to basically port it (because libparagui got abandoned and some stuff in libc changed so I couldn't just compile the old libparagui version with the new libc). It's surprisingly hard to make linux binaries that will work even 5 years from now, never mind 10-20 years from now. For comparison I still have games I've written for DOS and windows in 90s and the binaries still work (OK - I had to apply a patch for Turbo Pascal 7 200 MHz bug). The assumptions around linux software is that it will be maintained by infinite number of free programmers so you can change anything and people will sort it out.
- count-delight 1y ago
  Something I've been pondering recently: It is sometimes said that Apple is notorious on deprecating APIs and breaking backwards-compatibility at a rapid pace, but is it not fundamentally the same that is shared with Linux? Old developers lamenting that they have developed something useful in 2015-2015 that doesn't work in any more in 2025. And if Linux distributions do it and it can be thought to be a form of opinionated design, can Apple be blamed for it? Unix/FreeBSD legacy and all. Of course with Apple ecosystem you need relatively recent hardware and have to pay the annual developer program fee, but the expectation is still the same: if you release something, you should keep it up-to-date and not just "fire and forget" like in Windows and expect it to work. Maybe Windows is the anomaly here.
  - ajuc 1y ago
    Dunno I just never used Apple. It's not very popular over here.
- nektro 1y ago
  static binaries will never stop working i was pointing out that you and OP are conflating a particular dev environment with the stability of linux itself. gui/games in particular on linux is not an area that shares this same stability yet
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ajuc 1y ago
    > static binaries will never stop working Yeah, if you compile all the dependencies and dependencies of dependencies and so on statically. Which is a fun experience I've tried several times (have fun trying to statically compile gfx drivers or crypto libraries for example), wasted a few evenings, and then had to repeat anyway because the as-static-as-possible binaries do stop working sometimes. There's a reason linux distributions invented package managers. > i was pointing out that you and OP are conflating a particular dev environment with the stability of linux itself. We're talking software rot, not uptime? It's exactly about software stopping working on newer systems.

by nektro 1y ago

lovely article aside from this bit: > while those written for e.g. Linux will likely cease working in a decade or two there's nothing to support this claim in practice. linux is incredibly stable

ajuc 1y ago

I also noticed this part of the article but for the oposite reason (I think 10-20 years is overly optimistic). I've written a small 2d game for Linux back in 00s. Using C++, SDL and a few other libraries (for example now-abandoned libparagui for GUI). Any time I tried to run it afterwards - I had to recompile it, and a few times I had to basically port it (because libparagui got abandoned and some stuff in libc changed so I couldn't just compile the old libparagui version with the new libc). It's surprisingly hard to make linux binaries that will work even 5 years from now, never mind 10-20 years from now. For comparison I still have games I've written for DOS and windows in 90s and the binaries still work (OK - I had to apply a patch for Turbo Pascal 7 200 MHz bug). The assumptions around linux software is that it will be maintained by infinite number of free programmers so you can change anything and people will sort it out.

count-delight 1y ago
Something I've been pondering recently: It is sometimes said that Apple is notorious on deprecating APIs and breaking backwards-compatibility at a rapid pace, but is it not fundamentally the same that is shared with Linux? Old developers lamenting that they have developed something useful in 2015-2015 that doesn't work in any more in 2025. And if Linux distributions do it and it can be thought to be a form of opinionated design, can Apple be blamed for it? Unix/FreeBSD legacy and all. Of course with Apple ecosystem you need relatively recent hardware and have to pay the annual developer program fee, but the expectation is still the same: if you release something, you should keep it up-to-date and not just "fire and forget" like in Windows and expect it to work. Maybe Windows is the anomaly here.
- ajuc 1y ago
  Dunno I just never used Apple. It's not very popular over here.
nektro 1y ago
static binaries will never stop working i was pointing out that you and OP are conflating a particular dev environment with the stability of linux itself. gui/games in particular on linux is not an area that shares this same stability yet
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ajuc 1y ago
  > static binaries will never stop working Yeah, if you compile all the dependencies and dependencies of dependencies and so on statically. Which is a fun experience I've tried several times (have fun trying to statically compile gfx drivers or crypto libraries for example), wasted a few evenings, and then had to repeat anyway because the as-static-as-possible binaries do stop working sometimes. There's a reason linux distributions invented package managers. > i was pointing out that you and OP are conflating a particular dev environment with the stability of linux itself. We're talking software rot, not uptime? It's exactly about software stopping working on newer systems.