Comment by AnimalMuppet
3 months ago
For "value database", it seems to me that the trick is, you can't just ship the executable. You have to ship the executable plus the stored values, together, as your installation image. Then what you run in production is what you tested in staging, which is what you debugged on your development system.
I mean, there still may be other things that make this a Bad Idea(TM). But I think this could get around the specific issue mentioned in the article.
Basically, it's the Windows registry.
If it's about well-contained applications in a well designed (and user-centric) OS with a proper concept of "application" and "installation", with a usable enough mechanism, I don't see anything that would make it bad.
On Windows it's a disaster. To the point that dumping random text files around in Linux works better.