In addition to not breaking existing code, also has added benefit of boosting personal contribution metrics in eyes of management. Oh and it's really easy to revert things - all I have to do is find the latest copy and delete it. It'll work great, promise.
Add tests to the function as it exists today. Submit. Add new functionality, make sure tests still pass. Done. Updating a function here and there shouldn't require more staff.
From the About page: "...we demonstrate the technical feasibility and economical viability of circular business models..." I guess that means circular as in "recycled" parts?
> The operating system is another concept that is curious. Operating systems are dauntingly complex and totally unnecessary. It’s a brilliant thing that Bill Gates has done in selling the world on the notion of operating systems. It’s probably the greatest con game the world has ever seen... An operating system does absolutely nothing for you. As long as you had something—a subroutine called disk driver, a subroutine called some kind of communication support, in the modern world, it doesn’t do anything else.
- Chuck Moore, interview in "Masterminds of Programming", 2009
I love this quote, but the Mac OS showed a benefit Moore completely missed: an OS can gave a uniform appearance to every bit of software on a machine, giving the impression of hardware and software meant for each other. I think there's a psychological effect that benefits work efficiency and pleasure in using the machine. It's also undoubtedly been a great selling point for Apple in particular. Agreed Aqua was a high-water mark with this.
Of course, the downside is that the OS rules the day, so your choice of software quickly falls into a very small selection based on what OS you'd like. FOSS (or at least open source) tried to run around that, but for anything not purely command line it's very difficult to just pass around source and adapt it to wherever and whatever you'd like.
Lastly, for the past decade or more we've seen the browser take the place of the OS in this. There are quite a few downsides to that approach, especially the loss of the impression of a unified product build for the end user. But the house of cards / tower of babel continues to grow...if you'll excuse me I'll go back to my 7400-series logic now...
It's such a stupid quote. In fact, it's almost in the realm of "not even wrong".
The operating system (as in: a kernel) provides applications with an abstraction of the computer that allows applications to co-exist.
The "operating system" (as in: a desktop environment) provides users with a unified approach to design, interaction and cooperation.
We don't write applications to run on bare metal any more (or rather, very, very few people do), because that's neither desirable or cost-effective.
That "subroutine called a disk driver" is just ridiculous. Any modern computing device has more than one process that needs to write to the disk; the machinery that allows them all to do that without stepping on each other's toes is called an operating system (kernel).
I disagree. Even though we've added layers of abstraction even since then, the quote still reminds me to think "what are we really doing here?" Apart from arguing if it is crazy or genius, I will say it has broadened my mind and for that I'm very thankful.
> The "operating system" (as in: a desktop environment) provides users with a unified approach to design, interaction and cooperation.
I do stand corrected with that: desktop environment, not OS.
> Any modern computing device has more than one process that needs to write to the disk; the machinery that allows them all to do that without stepping on each other's toes...
I agree, but I'll also point out that in the end I, as the end user, only want one specific thing written to disk at a time - the word document, excel sheet, game state, etc. The vast majority of disk writes are supporting the abstractions that support the abstractions that support the abstractions that support me saving my word document. I understand why that is the case, but I still think it's amusing.
> in the end I, as the end user, only want one specific thing written to disk at a time
so you're in some sort of text editor, and you think that's all you want written to disk at a time.
but meanwhile, you've got a messaging app running somewhere, and messages are coming in, and you'd like to have a local copy of those for performance reasons, so they're being written to disk.
you've got an RSS reader running, which just found out about a new posting somewhere; it's going to write it to disk so it can tell you about it at any time.
your media control panel - you just adjusted that because the piece of music you're listening to is a bit loud, and you expect it to remember the current setting the next time you restart, which means ... write to disk. and the music player itself - that's going to write to disk so that it knows where you were in the playlist next time.
and so on and so forth.
the idea of a computer being a device on which you run one program at a time vanished before MS-DOS even existed.
really enjoyed this article from a few years ago. looks like the domain is no longer active but the content is a good intro and most of the external links still work
> Of course, the devil is in the details: the military needs service documentation, detailed schematics, 3D models of parts so they can be manufactured in the field, and so on.
This phrase, embedded in a quote touting the benefits, seems to me to show a big downside. If the Navy (owner) gains the right they also gain the responsibility, and it's not like the Navy is not some huge bureaucratic system. Quite the opposite, the Navy makes most contractors look like DIY Mom and Pops. A sailor may fix an oven themselves until someone gets burned or electrically shocked, at which point the bureaucratic machine starts up and we end back up at square one: waiting to fix ovens until after-actions, reg updates, personnel coaching, part investigation, etc.
In fact the more I focus on this phrase the more the whole article seems like a sarcasm piece (and not just because of the Vulture's reporting style).
You think the prospect of injuries in among military personell are going to prevent policies and practicalities that increase operational fitness? There are about 1.5 million injuries in the US military per year that require medical treatment and documentation (so more than a first aid kit). A few burns per year vs a 13 billion dollar carrier in a dysfunctional state... even an idiotic beaurocracy (which the miltiary is not) can figure that one out.
> You think the prospect of injuries in among military personell are going to prevent policies and practicalities that increase operational fitness?
My point is that someone has to shoulder the costs. I'm not sure I would classify the Navy as an "idiotic beaurocracy" but it is not an efficient organization. They can "get it done" as you imply only with an obscene amount of money budgeted (and even so still have to shuffle money around every year). In one scenario, contracting out helps operational fitness by letting sailors focus on their MOS and taking the burden of upkeep and maintenance off the table.
Sure, contracting is often done poorly or even wickedly, but the best solution isn't always to replace contracting with an MOS.
In addition to not breaking existing code, also has added benefit of boosting personal contribution metrics in eyes of management. Oh and it's really easy to revert things - all I have to do is find the latest copy and delete it. It'll work great, promise.
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