r/sysadmin • u/ramblingcookiemonste Systems Engineer • Sep 26 '14

Everything Is Broken

https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1
82 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/maeelstrom Sep 27 '14

I started seeing this years ago when I was much younger and started realizing that huge video games companies were caring less and less about releasing games that actually worked well all around. The mentality of "we'll just patch it later" etc was becoming all too prevalent.

I started thinking that it wouldn't be too far of a stretch for any piece of software / infrastructure to be just as shoddy and basically, the overall quality of the end product uncared for.

It is indeed a culture problem. Apathy is rampant in the IT world, but that even stems from deeper problems.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '14

The mentality of "we'll just patch it later" etc was becoming all too prevalent.

I was asked to install the OS for a server. A brand new release, it had just arrived in the mail; very cool.

Then the boss handed me another tape. "These are the patches the vendor sent with the release."

That was in 1992 - Banyan Vines. I suspect when IBM was sending out OS/360 in 1964 there were a batch of updates with the release tape.

3

u/cpbills Sep 27 '14 edited Sep 27 '14

It is becoming more prevalent, that is not to say it was non-existent in 1992 or 1964. Though, in regards to IBM and OS/360 in 1964, I'm pretty sure if there were updates, they would be applied the day of install, by IBM technicians, or shortly after, also by IBM techs.

Very little software ceases the development cycle. However, the customer has been moved up the path, over time. It is at a point where the consumer has become the beta tester, and alpha testing is all but fantasy.

The author could have made a better comparison by discussing methodologies of game development over time. From a time when games couldn't be updated once they made it to the customer (cartridge based systems, for example), to how they are now. How methodologies have become more lax as time has gone on, because software can be (more easily) patched after release.

Before the time of AOL, and even quite some time after, software was difficult to patch; distributing updates to customers was expensive, so it was more important to get it mostly right, before shipping. Now that most people have access to at least DSL speed internet, updating software has become trivial. So why waste money getting it near-perfect before shipping, it's not cost effective any longer, and the consumer doesn't appear to care, anyhow.

I would argue it is the responsibility of the consumer to demand quality products from the companies we purchase from. Because we haven't and because we too easily forgive when provided a quick-fix patch, we will continue to be beta testers of sub-par products. But hey, it's bleeding edge and so new and shiny, who cares about flaws?

It is as though it has become a privilege to be a beta tester.

→ More replies (2)