I’m curious how software can be created and evolve over time. I’m afraid that at some point, we’ll realize there are issues with the software we’re using that can only be remedied by massive changes or a complete rewrite.

Are there any instances of this happening? Where something is designed with a flaw that doesn’t get realized until much later, necessitating scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch?

  • PrimalHero@kbin.social
    1·
    7 months ago

    What part of 40 year old code that is so messed up that it’s not cleanable any more do you not understand.

      • nyan@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        7 months ago

        Simply put, no one with the necessary skills has come forward and demonstrated the willingness to do the work. No programmer I’ve ever met enjoys wrestling with other people’s crufty old code. It isn’t fun, it isn’t creative, and it’s often an exercise in, “What the unholy fsck was whoever wrote this thinking, and where did I put the ‘Bang head here’ mousepad?” So getting volunteers to mop out the bilges only happens when someone really wants to keep a particular piece of software working. It’s actually more difficult than getting people to contribute to a new project.

        So getting rid of X’s accumulated legacy cruft isn’t impossible, but I suspect someone would need to set up the “Clean up X” foundation and offer money for it to actually happen. (I’m no happier about that than you, by the way.)

          • PrimalHero@kbin.social
            1·
            7 months ago

            Says the guy that believes its propaganda 😂
            Blaming the developers of wayland instead of the company, who refuses to cooperate with them. You are really smart.
            Have you seen the codebase from x11. Multiple developers who have worked on x11 for decades say its not worth the time to fix it. It was not designed to run on modern systems. Yet here you are all knowing and you saying it they are wrong. You know better.
            X11 is dead, get over it and move on.