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> I mean, all software has bugs. That's a cool mantra to repeat but it do not seem to match reality. For instance, in over 10 years of daily usage, I do not t
by gbog 12y ago
> I mean, all software has bugs.
That's a cool mantra to repeat but it do not seem to match reality.
For instance, in over 10 years of daily usage, I do not think having ever noticed any bugs in vim, grep and PostgreSQL. Just to take grep, for instance: if it says the string is not in the file, I have 100% confidence it is not in the file. So not only grep do not freeze my PC, it is also deterministic, which means perfectly reliable when one talks its language.
OSes are more complex you will tell me. Yep, but you said "all software has bugs".
- pdabbadabba 12y agoWell, if we're being pedantic, the fact that you have never noticed a bug in Vim, grep, and PostgreSQL does not mean they don't exist. If you google, e.g., "postgresql bug" you will find evidence of this. The charitable reading of GP's comment is, of course, that virtually all software has bugs, or that all complex software has bugs. Or, even better, that it is extremely difficult to write bug-free code, and this difficulty rapidly increases with the complexity of the software.
- eddieroger 12y agoYou can't acknowledge that an operating system is more complex, but then not give it the benefit of the doubt of halting a system on a bug. If grep or vim fail, they just abort. If Postgres fails, you maybe get a corrupted database and it aborts. If OS X kernel panics, the machine halts. All software has bugs. Also, if Postgres' bugs were unnoticeable, why did 9.3 get to 9.3.5 before the went to 9.4? Just because you didn't notice a bug doesn't mean someone else wasn't affected by it, and just because you notice bugs in OS X (which I'd bet you didn't) doesn't make them big issues.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]