One theme that seems to recur and is depressing to me is that software gets worse over time. (Slower faster than hardware improves. Increasing software entropy.) That does seem to be the case in corporate codebases, but why?
Software doesn’t really “rot” over time. The frame of reference changes. It “rots” relative to evolving expectations. The jarring thing is that it seems to be very rare that human countercorrection to this (more code! more features!) prevents or reverses that. Instead, it tends to accelerate the rot, especially in closed-source corporate codebases where “requirements” come from people who don’t remotely understand the technology or vision, but have power.
I tend to think that, at this point, closed-source corporate software just isn’t built to last. If you want the thing to live, open source it. Why? Because the people who have the ability to maintain software in a way that improves it are rare, and they usually have better job options than maintenance of closed-source commercial code.
One theme that seems to recur and is depressing to me is that software gets worse over time. (Slower faster than hardware improves. Increasing software entropy.) That does seem to be the case in corporate codebases, but why?
Software doesn’t really “rot” over time. The frame of reference changes. It “rots” relative to evolving expectations. The jarring thing is that it seems to be very rare that human countercorrection to this (more code! more features!) prevents or reverses that. Instead, it tends to accelerate the rot, especially in closed-source corporate codebases where “requirements” come from people who don’t remotely understand the technology or vision, but have power.
I tend to think that, at this point, closed-source corporate software just isn’t built to last. If you want the thing to live, open source it. Why? Because the people who have the ability to maintain software in a way that improves it are rare, and they usually have better job options than maintenance of closed-source commercial code.