"The process of maintaining large-scale software is always miserable. Because of this, digital technology tempts the programmer's psyche into a kind of schizophrenia."
#iamnotagadget @vagabond
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"Technologists wish every program behaved like a brand-new, playful little program, and will use any available psychological strategy to avoid thinking about computers realistically."
#iamnotagadget
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@33MHz Hmmm. I'm curious about the context of that statement. The first sentence makes sense to me. I'm more curious about the second.
585770
@vagabond "There is constant confusion between real and ideal computers."
...
"The brittle character of maturing computer programs can cause digital designs to get frozen into place by a process known as lock-in."
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@vagabond "...when many software programs are designed to work with an existing one. The process of significantly changing software in a situation in which a lot of other software is dependent on it is the hardest thing to do. So it almost never happens."
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@33MHz Like adding on to a house with a crooked foundation?
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@33MHz case in point (or maybe an exception?): i want to install laravel, but the newest version requires php7.1.3, while debian 9 only supports php7.0. inconvenient. can lead to tough design decisions.
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@vagabond You can add dedicated repos for PHP to your apt sources:
wget -q https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ stretch main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list
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@vagabond (then sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade, then install php)
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@vagabond The perfect example is the ERP we were building. We build it with a certain set of expectations. Then new pieces are added that build on top of existing functionality. Then new requirements pop up, and we have to change the foundation +all else.
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@33MHz I remember some of those frustrations. I wouldn't say that I miss that part of it, but I do miss the job sometimes. I'm starting to work with Laravel a bit. Makes me appreciate the simplicity of the framework we were using.
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@vagabond Yeah - it goes both ways. Laravel comes with a bunch of CLI tools, job queuing, etc that "just work". I do prefer to build it from scratch, though.
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@33MHz I'm pretty sure I agree with you, but it's interesting to explore. And I certainly see things that could be pretty useful.
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