Your list is interesting because of how it overlaps with yet reframes mine (from http://akkartik.name/about):
A. Backwards compatibility considerations. Early mistakes in the design of an interface are often perpetuated indefinitely. Supporting them takes code. Projects that add many new features also accumulate many missteps. Over time the weight of these past adaptations starts to prevent future adaptation.
B. Churn in personnel. If a project lasts long enough early contributors eventually leave and are replaced by new ones. The new ones have holes in their knowledge of the codebase, all the different facilities provided, the reasons why design decisions were made just so. Peter Naur pointed out back in 1985 (http://akkartik.name/naur.pdf) the odd fact that that no matter how much documentation we write, we can't seem to help newcomers understand our programs without talking to the original authors. In-person interactive conversations tend to be a precious resource; there's only so many of them newcomers can have before they need to start contributing to a project, and there's only so much bandwidth the old hands have to review changes for unnecessary complexity or over-engineering. Personnel churn is a lossy process; every generation of programmers on a project tends to know less about it, and to be less in control of it.
C. Vestigial features. Even after accounting for compatibility considerations, projects past a certain age often have features that can be removed. However, such simplification rarely happens because of the risk of regressions. We forget precisely why we did what we did, and that forces us to choose between reintroducing regressions or continuing to cargo-cult old solutions long after they've become unnecessary.
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I can't really rebut anything you say. I'm going to keep it on my radar as I go about my project. It's currently pre-network, unsecured and inaccessible. And will always be manually configured, for reasons described in the link. But it's supported, for what that's worth.
A. Backwards compatibility considerations. Early mistakes in the design of an interface are often perpetuated indefinitely. Supporting them takes code. Projects that add many new features also accumulate many missteps. Over time the weight of these past adaptations starts to prevent future adaptation.
B. Churn in personnel. If a project lasts long enough early contributors eventually leave and are replaced by new ones. The new ones have holes in their knowledge of the codebase, all the different facilities provided, the reasons why design decisions were made just so. Peter Naur pointed out back in 1985 (http://akkartik.name/naur.pdf) the odd fact that that no matter how much documentation we write, we can't seem to help newcomers understand our programs without talking to the original authors. In-person interactive conversations tend to be a precious resource; there's only so many of them newcomers can have before they need to start contributing to a project, and there's only so much bandwidth the old hands have to review changes for unnecessary complexity or over-engineering. Personnel churn is a lossy process; every generation of programmers on a project tends to know less about it, and to be less in control of it.
C. Vestigial features. Even after accounting for compatibility considerations, projects past a certain age often have features that can be removed. However, such simplification rarely happens because of the risk of regressions. We forget precisely why we did what we did, and that forces us to choose between reintroducing regressions or continuing to cargo-cult old solutions long after they've become unnecessary.
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I can't really rebut anything you say. I'm going to keep it on my radar as I go about my project. It's currently pre-network, unsecured and inaccessible. And will always be manually configured, for reasons described in the link. But it's supported, for what that's worth.