Was reading the Urbit blog, and Moldkike revitalizes the solution to the cancer of the ever increasing version number and the harm caused by always having to fucking change shit around so some blue-haired land whale of a "UX" designer can pretend they're innovating: Kelvin versioning and frozen software. Instead of increasing version numbers and redesigning the toolbar for the billionth time every release, you decrease your version numbers, stop changing shit in your software and focus on creating software that is mature and doesn't need to change. When you adopt this policy, it creates a totally different political atmosphere and world view for the developers and users of the software. Guaranteed to drive away the trans-banshee otherkins and their notions of "progress."
I'm trying to think of some kind of software that would actually benefit from this approach and drawing up blanks.
Josiah Cook
The only other projects I can think of where that makes sense are TeX and TempleOS. TeX will stabilize to version pi some time after Knuth dies, with all bugs officially becoming features for the sake of eternal compatibility. TempleOS aims to be perfect at some point, an operating system to last millennia. But you can't do it to Linux, which has to adapt to ever-changing hardware. Or to web browsers, which have to adapt to ever-changing web standards. Or to most programs, really. It might also discourage fixes and improvements that really do need to happen. It's useful for certain idealistic projects (including Urbit) but not in general. I don't see increasing major version numbers as a problem. At most, they're a symptom of much deeper problems.
I doubt it, but good job inserting something neo-reactionary into it to make it hard to market I guess.
That's because you're only thinking in the short term. By 2020-2022, Moore's Law is going to slow down even more. Hardware is going to stop changing. Updates to things like the Linux kernel will slow down or become more incremental.
The PC is going to become more like Amiga.
Liam Gonzalez
autism
Adam Sullivan
That's where you have to divide to conquer. Declare an ever stable, unchanging version of your kernel, and handle new drivers and hardware outside of the kernel. And create a whole new system when the hardware environment changes so much that the old system no longer makes any sense.
Same deal, different direction. Declare a standard that you will adhere to, and ignore everything else.
Jack Martinez
how about you use one version of the linux kernel and dont update? kill yourself
Kevin Sanders
Kelvin is not a degree scale :^)
Enjoy having no users when people keep running into broken webpages. Whether it's the browser's or the server's fault doesn't even matter.
Jayden Peterson
I never claimed that freezing your system is a way to reach popularity. Merely, that it is a way to reach stability.
Henry Price
That's not saying much. Freezing your system and making it stable are approximately the same thing. The point is, a web browser that's bad at displaying webpages is a bad web browser. Stability is nice and all but your proposal directly works against the goals most people have.
Josiah Jones
Except you wouldn't have this problem if incompetent javascript pajeets would stop remaking shitty interchange formats for the web.
The way to fix it is to first build a replacement for the web that will become stable. Then leave the web behind and let it die off over the years.
In fact, that's what Urbit is.
David Miller
I see your point. My point is that popularity is not everybody's goal. In some cases it is more important to present the same set of data, in exactly the same way, for all eternity, than to present new data sets in new ways.
Justin Thompson
Yes, but we're talking about web browsers here. I already acknowledged that there are other cases in which Kelvin versioning is appropriate, like TeX. TeX aims to present the same set of data in exactly the same way for all eternity. The world wide web doesn't. Right from the start it has been designed to be representable in different ways, with tags rather than italic tags, alt texts for images, and so on.
Nathaniel Reed
You fell into their trap and assumed that just because you went from Chrome 57 to Chrome 58 that it was some kind of major release and not just another conglomeration of bugfixes and tweaks. That's what they wanted you to think all along when they adopted the integer version scheme -- they wanted you to FEEL like you were getting a big upgrade all the time, even though you weren't.
Adam Morgan
The idea of freezing versions is completely fucking retarded for something that constantly needs to change, i.e. web browsers. What if some RCE bug gets uncovered? What if a new HTML tag gets added to the W3C specification? While I agree that the way web browser vendors are using version numbers are retarded (major version numbers indicate that there has been an API-breaking change, not "lol we changed the shading of the toolbar buttons and now they're flat"), freezing software when there's a constantly changing spec is stupid. Same with kernels, there's new hardware released and new bugs found everyday.
James Baker
True but the marketers don't give a dame about that. They could (and have already) sell the same CPU with only different colors then people will fall for it.
Isaac Rivera
When they run out of hardware "upgrades" they'll just switch to selling even more DRM crippled hardware and add on some downloadable content for extra profits. (Pic related.)
Carson Russell
Marketers needs to die.
Dylan Allen
who else but kikes tbh
Cameron Thomas
emacs 22 your thread is invalid
Leo Morris
...
Elijah Ross
seL4 is mostly complete, it's just the drivers. No software is perfect and there is always bugs in the code. Give me a example in a piece of software that has 0 bugs. Protip: you can't. If you don't like how certain software just out in uneeded features this is not a solution to it.
Carson Allen
TempleOS
Gavin Smith
For a small enough software that's doable. All you have to do is prove the code obeys the spec. Of course, the spec itself may be wrong, but then it isn't a bug in the code but the spec.
Samuel Watson
that Urbit meme again
Kayden Morris
nothing of any importance uses this retarded version scheme. all you listed is a bunch of advertising bullshit except Mesa. The others in the list literally only increase their numbers like that because it makes more hype.
Owen Sanchez
I also can't list any software that isn't litered with newgrad-tier bugs because they can't properly vet their developers.
Henry Lopez
Don't know about the hype but it's easier that way for a consumer. For example, you go to a store to buy a new PlayStation having no idea what the current version is. Chances are, you're going to pick the one with number 4 rather than the one with number 3.
Luke Scott
As far I can tell, less(1) was first to popularize it. IMO the problem is with consistency, not the scheme itself. First unix less(1) was version 1. Whereas netscape/chrome switched abrubtly.
John Edwards
Moore's law is bullshit. haven't people been saying "muh Moore's law" since like the mid 80's?
