and that's why it takes round-the-clock oncall teams to keep fixing it
otherwise it stops working
we suspect there's going to be a practical demonstration of this at some point in the next 24 hours. truly quite tragic, especially for the workers who spent years of their lives making it all go. also very bad for independent creators whose revenue was tied to the thing.
it's insane to me that this is true. Software feels like something which, in the ideal, ought to be roughly "one and done" (assuming few bugs and no change of requirements)
i mean this politely, but there are so many moving parts that are changing underneath you all the time. the bigger the thing, the bigger the potential for any part of the foundation to crack. it's horrifying but I suspect this is... a last hurrah of twt.
I may or may not already agree with you depending on specifically which moving parts you are referring to?
(Also, what is twt?)
Wrote "twt" meaning Twitter. And I mean that dependencies break, programs get abandoned, links rot, accounts banned, etc. Any one thing breaking can result in a myriad of curious or implausible fixes being needed to even make things operational. I think the case of leftpad in the npm ecosystem is a fun one just based on how many things broke when it went poof. I can't say what'll break because I didn't build it or work there. It's just a vibe based on too many other projects losing key people and especially ones with way less people than Twitter did
Yeah, then I do agree with you that most software stands on shaky foundation, but I guess my claim is that in almost all cases there's a better way to do it
For instance, NPM's leftPad (IMO) reflects a design flaw in NPM more than anything; uploaded packages should be immutable
(I will grant that there is at least one "runtime dependency" which is hard to beat, and that is a working internet connection ;p)
broadly speaking we're on the same page there, in that we also believe that it's important to shore up those foundations, and that there are clear paths to doing so.
we do worry a bit about doing so through increasing the control that hierarchical power structures such as the NPM organization have over the practice of software development, but we think there's clear alternatives to hierarchy that are already underway elsewhere in the broader free software ecosystem, and we're hopeful that everything will work itself out.
the main thing that makes it difficult to take time to reinforce the foundations is that everyone is constantly adding features. sometimes building better things means slowing down and taking the time to do it right.
It really already feels like it's been falling apart for a couple weeks, this next day is going to be even rougher.
yep. and combined with the "relaxed" (cough) moderation guidelines, "blue checks for $8" starting on Monday, and the midterms on Tuesday ... also quite possibly not very good for democracy. we shall see.
the layoffs have started. one friend of ours was laid off while oncall a couple hours ago. and the secondary oncall was also laid off. and their manager was laid off. and it's a large, complicated service that has a substantial impact on ad revenue. we'll be extremely impressed if things are going well enough for them to even think about rolling out new features by Monday.
Yeah, I’ve been worried about the new features, and then I remembered Musk’s management capabilities and past project rollouts, and came to much the same conclusion.
We're mostly just feeling bad for everyone who's left, who's going to have to deal with the complaints and trying to fix it. We've been there. It's not fun.
I saw the mr big CEO said they were going to replace / rewrite everything from scratch, which, lol.
How hard or long could replacing a decades old production system possibly go. Uh oh. Uh oh. Oh no.
in a manner of speaking. specifically, in precisely the sense that death is a form of change.
I spend more time than I would like thinking about how the dude responsible for this is still basically allowed to have the influence of a world leader because he purchased the title of Technology Guy, despite demonstrably and persistently having no clue what's up about anything at all.
I just hope it doesn't sunder things too badly before the current Whispering Stories run ends.
watching Twitter die makes my heart sad while my systems witch self is fascinated & excited to watch it happen
yeah really. it's like watching any other complex chain-reaction disaster: fascinating, but people are getting hurt and a community is being destroyed.
^exactly this but can't stop watching
We actually hate those film reels where loads of people are having accidents though. :/ Don't like watching people get hurt.
yes, someday we'll tell our story about the fire we survived, and how we learned about the bystander effect, and how our resolve to never be a bystander was pivotal to our eventually becoming activists
