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Post #2189095

2026-04-03 22:34 UTC

@glyph@mastodon.social For one thing - iron rusts, but software doesn’t. Or shouldn’t! I guess that’s the whole problem right there, eh?

Replies (2)

  • @ancoghlan@mastodon.social 2026-04-03 23:17

    @jacob@social.jacobian.org @glyph@mastodon.social There's a story about bridge maintenance where the gist was that by the time one pass of repainting the support structure was complete, it was time to start the next pass. Road maintenance is another brutally expensive (and unrelenting) activity. So "build for maintenance" isn't just a software thing - it's something that software inherited from physical engineering, where making the most likely to wear out pieces easy to replace makes a big difference in maintenance costs.

    Open ##2189096

  • @glyph@mastodon.social 2026-04-04 00:11

    @jacob@social.jacobian.org Yeah, that's the problem. Hence my retrocomputing example. If software *really* didn't corrode, why aren't we all just using Mac OS 8.6, the last really good operating system ;)

    Open ##2189098