[HN Gopher] The Generation Ship Model of Software Development (2...
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The Generation Ship Model of Software Development (2014)
Author : zdw
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-12-21 04:03 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| linrl3 wrote:
| How about the situation in which we create a new repo or new
| project? Does it fit this ship model?
| serallak wrote:
| The reference to the Unix epoch in that book always get me.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > You dig into the code. It's an exercise in archaeology.
|
| Reminds me of the "programmer-archaeologists" from A Fire Upon
| The Deep.
| jfzoid wrote:
| that was a fantastic book, and the Arguing On the Internet in
| it was both very descriptive of it's time and very prescient of
| ours.
|
| and the aliens (no spoilers) in it were very cool
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The author is Vernor Venge (pron. "Vengie"?); He's not
| exactly prolific. He's done a couple of other books in the
| same world. They're good too. But his day-job was teaching
| maths and CS.
|
| I wonder what you could do with the film-rights to that
| story.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep
| Konohamaru wrote:
| Generation ships are scary for this reason. The logic is designed
| so that you can't figure out whether it reached its telos.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Nothing to do with software development, but this reminds me of
| the Silo series of books by Hugh Howey - which I absolutely
| loved.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| At a high enough abstraction, it has absolutely everything to
| do with software development. Including the last sentence. I
| don't have the will to describe it, but I suppose with time
| it'll come together, or not.
|
| And, if I had the context outside of my field, I wouldn't be
| surprised that it described a wide variety of other industries.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| This article is bad, actually. The analogy does not illuminate
| anything about software development. It's just a semi-interesting
| bit of scifi writing with a contrived connection to software
| development, but it doesn't contain any information or advice. If
| you enjoy the scifi scenario, fine, but it doesn't make any sense
| for it to be posted to Hacker News because it is not hacker news,
| it's a scifi story with a bad analogy tacked on the end.
| gallerdude wrote:
| I think the fundamental message is very relevant to software
| development: question everything. It's really easy to get so
| caught up in the layers of abstraction, that we forget that
| we're making software for people.
|
| A chef who painstakingly concerned himself with where he
| sourced his ingredients may or may not be a good chef. But the
| chef who concerned herself deeply with the taste of the meal
| would probably be a good one.
|
| Yet, when we talk about software development, 90% of what we
| talk about is stack, and 10% is what we built. I'm not super
| successful or anything, but I imagine the founders who focus on
| the 10% are the better ones.
| thoughtsimple wrote:
| I think you are missing the date it was written. The article is
| almost 9 years old. That is older than even most stack overflow
| answers. The software world has changed quite a bit in the last
| 10 years. You are less likely to find yourself in an
| environment where this analogy was more appropriate (thank the
| gods). But as someone who has worked in the software industry
| for 30+ years, this was more accurate than you think.
| diydsp wrote:
| Protip: this isn't just abt sw, it's a metaphor for human
| existence.
| jldugger wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of the most depressing episode of Kino's
| Journey, "Three Men Along the Rails."
|
| Kino is traveling by motorcycle along a railroad line, and
| encounters the first man, who is clearing away the grass and
| rust. He has worked for the company for fifty years. He had a
| wife and child when he left, but unfortunately, has never
| returned home since his first departure, he is unsure of their
| current well being. They exchange pleasantries and Kino
| continues her journey.
|
| Kino the meets a second man working on the railroad the next
| day. This one is removing the tracks, as ordered by his
| employer. He he left home support his five younger brothers at
| home, and had never returned for the past fifty years. They
| comment on how well maintained the tracks are, but do not
| question on why.
|
| She meets a third man on the third day as she follows the
| trail. He is setting down new tracks as requested by the
| railroad company. He reveals that he took the job to support
| his ill parents, but as it has been fifty years, they have most
| likely already passed away.
| toyg wrote:
| It would have been nice for the author to point out the original
| influences for their "embedded short story", like _Orphans of the
| Sky_ by Heinlein.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Generation ship is a trope with countless examples, no single
| one. It's practically a vocabulary word like 'space ship'.
|
| I would have said Brian W. Aldiss 'Non-Stop' or Ben Bova 'The
| Exiles' or Harlan Ellison 'The Starlost', but only because they
| just happen to be some of the examples I happen to have
| encountered and found particularly memorable. I've probably
| read and forgotten 20 others.
| euroderf wrote:
| The Canadian TV adaptation of Starlost was great. Keir
| Dullea, gone tomorrow. Low-budget fun. Worth a watch.
| blamestross wrote:
| Orphans of the Sky wins the influence race by being published
| in 1951.
| euroderf wrote:
| What was that recent-ish series where the generation ship finally
| reaches its destination after like 50,000 years and the inside is
| just a mess of loose water and organic material ?
| awkward wrote:
| I think that this is good because it really does describe what
| software dev used to be like, and remnants of this still exist in
| a lot of major institutions. I've recently had to jam a cloud
| first solution through an architecture review board with largely
| hands off keyboard type jobs, so the priests at least rang true
| to me.
|
| It's easy to overestimate how hard open source has won, and how
| little influence "Not invented here complex" has on most systems.
| Most software now comes in a stack, and other companies use the
| same stack with some light add ons. The most common experience of
| software development wasn't like that as late as 2010. The New
| York times used to maintain it's own programming language whose
| only application was the NYT website. Trello did too, and there
| are many companies that did that without hitting the conference
| circuit about it.
|
| The big shift that made the world we're in now is the idea of
| domain specific languages largely going away and the idea of
| software being an integrative practice replacing them. The big
| cultural marker might be MIT switching their intro course from
| scheme to python in the late 00s.
| pydry wrote:
| _Used_ to be like?
|
| IME NIH syndrome is alive and well. Not that this article would
| be entirely off base even if it wasnt.
| awkward wrote:
| There's always going to be that guy. The question is whether
| he builds his own shed or gets to design the whole
| skyscraper.
| g0nk2 wrote:
| The equation is better expressed as "Build versus Buy",
| imho.
|
| Actually it seems to me to be a 'natural law' of software
| development - no matter the discipline/industry/inkling -
| that on certain event horizons, one must decide whether to
| build something, or buy it.
|
| For many people, the _act itself_ is all that matters.
|
| For some, its the _users_ who decide.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The New York times used to maintain it's own programming
| language whose only application was the NYT website. Trello did
| too, and there are many companies that did that without hitting
| the conference circuit about it.
|
| C#, Swift and to a lesser degree Hack are still very much
| alive. But the two former are public by design. There's no
| advantages anymore to having a custom DSL.
|
| > The big cultural marker might be MIT switching their intro
| course from scheme to python in the late 00s.
|
| The target audience of the course also changed quite a bit. Now
| it's taken by undergrads of all majors while it used to be
| taught to a mostly CS audience.
|
| With that in mind, it makes sense to teach Python, since it's
| nearly universal and has nice data-analysis libraries that are
| well documented.
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