76 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
76 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
Beating software version fatigue
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<p>In his latest<br />
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<a href="http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-061902B">Tech Central Station column</a>, Glenn Reynolds complains<br />
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of `version fatigue’, his accumulating angst over the fact that since the<br />
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emid-1980s he’s had to migrate through three word processors and several<br />
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different versions of Windows.</p>
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<p>I can’t fix the sad fact that every new VCR and remote control you get<br />
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has a different control layout. But if we’re talking software, baby, I have<br />
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got your solution.</p>
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<p>I have been using the same text editor since 1982. I have been using the<br />
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same command-line shell since 1985, and the same operating system since 1993.<br />
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But that last date is actually misleading, because I still get use out of<br />
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programs I wrote for the previous dialect of my OS as far back as 1982,<br />
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without ever having had to alter a line.</p>
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<p>The last time I had to learn a new feature set for any of the tools<br />
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I regularly used was when I decided to change window systems in 1997,<br />
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and that was not a vendor-forced upgrade. Yes, that’s right; it means<br />
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I’ve been getting mileage out of essentially the same user interface<br />
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for five straight years. Half a decade.</p>
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<p>Does this mean I’m using software tools that were feature-frozen when<br />
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dinosaurs walked the earth? No, actually, it doesn’t. The text editor,<br />
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which is what I spend my screen time interacting with, has grown tremendously<br />
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in capability over the twenty years I’ve been using it. The shell I use<br />
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has a lot of convenience features it didn’t in 1985, but I’ve only had<br />
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to learn them as I chose.</p>
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<p>I don’t have a version-fatigue problem, and never have. I get to<br />
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use cutting-edge software tools that probably exceed in capability<br />
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anything you are directly familiar with. And I have every confidence,<br />
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based on my last twenty years of experience, that my software will both<br />
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continue to both offer me the innovative leading edge and remain<br />
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feature-stable for the next twenty years if I so choose.</p>
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<p>How do I achieve this best of both worlds? One word: Unix.</p>
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<p>I’m a Unix guy. You may have heard that I have something to do<br />
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with this Linux thing, and Linux is indeed what I use today. But<br />
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Linux is only the most recent phase of a continuous engineering<br />
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tradition that goes back to 1969. In that world, we don’t have<br />
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the kind of disruptive feature churn that forces people to upgrade<br />
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to incompatible operating systems every 2.5 years. Our software<br />
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lifetimes are measured in <em>decades</em>. And our applications,<br />
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like the Emacs text editor I use, frequently outlast the version<br />
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of Unix they were born under.</p>
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<p>There are a couple of intertwined reasons for this. One is that<br />
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we tend to get the technology decisions right the first time — Unix<br />
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is, as Niklaus Wirth once said of Algol, “a vast improvement over<br />
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most of its successors”. Unix people confronted with Windows for<br />
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the first time tend to react with slack-jawed shock that any product<br />
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so successful could be such a complete design disaster.</p>
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<p>Perhaps more importantly, Unix/Linux people are not stuck with a<br />
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business model that requires planned obsolescence in order to generate<br />
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revenue. Also, our engineering tradition puts a high value on open<br />
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standards. So our software tends to be forward-compatible.</p>
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<p>As an example: about a year ago I changed file-system formats from<br />
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ext2 to ext3. In the Windows world, I’d have had to back up all my<br />
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files, reinstall the OS, restore my files, and then spend a week<br />
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hand-fixing bits of my system configuration that weren’t captured in<br />
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the backups. Instead, I ran one conversion utility. Once.</p>
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<p>Most of the consumer-level problems with computer software —<br />
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crashes, bad design, version fatigue due to the perpetual upgrade<br />
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treadmill — are not inherent in the technology. They are, rather,<br />
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consequences of user-hostile business models. Microsoft, and<br />
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companies like them, have no incentive to solve the problems<br />
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of crashes, poor security, and version fatigue. They <em>like</em><br />
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the perpetual upgrade treadmill. It’s how they make money.</p>
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<p>Want to beat software version fatigue? It’s easy, Glenn. Take<br />
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control; dump the closed-source monopolists; get off the treadmill.<br />
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OpenOffice will let you keep your MS-Word documents and your Excel<br />
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spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Join the Linux revolution,<br />
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and never see a Blue Screen of Death again.</p>
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<p>UPDATE: A reader complains that Linux is difficult to install.<br />
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Answer: Get thee to the Linux user group near you, who will be more<br />
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than happy to help you get liberated. Or get thee to Wal-Mart, which<br />
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is now selling cheap machines with Lindows, a Linux variant tuned to<br />
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look like Windows, for $299.</p>
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<p><a href="http://enetation.co.uk/comments.php?user=esr&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;commentid=77940749">Blogspot<br />
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comments</a></p>
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