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Comment by yetihehe

5 months ago

> (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting)

I had problems solved several times by rebooting modem. One time it was "reboot modem and access point in proper order", me naively rebooting them both at the same time didn't help, only phone support solved this problem.

> Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer.

Hmm, I might be desensitivised from too much programming in erlang. It's implied that your program will encounter bugs or strange data and parts WILL be restarted, better account for that and plan on what to do on restart of each small part at the start of writing your program.

> So, basically there doesn't seem to be any phone technical support (with a human), at all.

Because it's cheaper. Those who don't have support can offer lower prices. When people search for trinkets, they only have information about what is supported, there is no good information about quality of device and support, high price also not always means better support. SO they just go for lower price and hope not to suffer too much.

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yetihehe

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gregmac  5 months ago

> Hmm, I might be desensitivised from too much programming in erlang. It's implied that your program will encounter bugs or strange data and parts WILL be restarted, better account for that and plan on what to do on restart of each small part at the start of writing your program.

That's different from having software that can get into an unknown broken state, where physically power cycling it is the only fix.

It's better to crash and ensure there's a process that automatically restarts. Or use a watchdog process. Just breaking, to the point companies build external systems to reboot them, is just bad.