Comment by armchairhacker
2 years ago
Counterpoint: some types of software aren’t meant to last long. Even if it still builds and can be worked on later, the usecase itself may have changed or disappeared, or someone has probably come up with a new better version, so that it’s no longer worth it to continue.
This probably doesn’t apply to many types of software over 6 months, but in a couple years or a couple decades. Some online services like CI or package managers will almost certainly provide backwards-compatible service until then.
Another possibility is that developer efficiency improves so much that the code written 10 years ago is easier to completely rewrite today, than it is to maintain and extend.
This is why I’m hesitant to think about software lasting decades, because tech changes so fast it’s hard to know what the next decade will look like. My hope is that in a few years, LLMs and/or better developer tools will make code more flexible, so that it’s very easy to upgrade legacy code and fix imperfect code.
"Another possibility is that developer efficiency improves so much that the code written 10 years ago is easier to completely rewrite today, than it is to maintain and extend."
This seems completely false to me and I'm curious what has caused you to believe this as I'm a fairly imaginative and creative person yet I cannot imagine a set of circumstance that would lead someone to this conclusion.
In other words, I disagree so very strongly with that statement that I wanted to engage rather than just downvote. (I didn't btw).
I agree with your first statement though and I don't think the op is saying only make cold-blooded projects.
Well. I don’t know if I agree or not, but felt like playing devils advocate.
take the example of game development. Trying to maintain, say, the hobbit game from the early 2000s to today would almost certainly take more work than just making a new one from scratch today (GPUs have changed drastically over the past 20 years and making simple 3d platformers with unreal is so easy, “asset flips” are a new kind of scam)
Or a tool which lets people visually communicate over vast distances without specialized hardware.
That was a huge lift in the 2000s when Skype was the only major player, but you can find tutorials for it now using webrtc.