[HN Gopher] Dependencies and resilience
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       Dependencies and resilience
        
       Author : sebastianingino
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2024-04-09 21:59 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ingino.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ingino.me)
        
       | xamuel wrote:
       | I wonder how much dependencies could be reduced by systematically
       | searching low-hanging fruit and addressing it ad hoc. For
       | example, if commonly-used library A uses one minor thing from
       | (and thus imports all of) library B, which in turn imports
       | hundreds of other libraries, then someone should add the minor
       | thing in question to A and remove the dependency on B there.
       | 
       | It's interesting to think of how this sort of "neighborhood
       | watch" could be incentivized, since it's probably way too big of
       | a task for purely volunteer work. It's tricky though because any
       | incentive to remove dependencies would automatically be a
       | perverse incentive to ADD dependencies (so that you can later
       | remove them and get the credit for it).
        
       | kkfx wrote:
       | The solution exists since decades: instead of having layered OSes
       | + application software back at Xerox time Smalltalk workstations
       | was an OS as a single application, live framework, "apps" was
       | just bits of code. Today it's the same (nearly, all but the C
       | core) in Emacs.
       | 
       | This model makes "bad citizens" a nightmare because they are not
       | isolated bits that fails individually but "something that fail
       | inside the system", this might led to a slow development for
       | revolutionary things, very quick development for incremental
       | evolution, witch is probably very good.
       | 
       | Unfortunately this model means end-user programming, the power of
       | computing in users hands, not the dumb human operating like a
       | monkey an endpoint of a remote service/mainframe model alike. A
       | thing most IT giants really dislike because it can easily erase
       | their business...
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-11 23:02 UTC)