[indifferentalex]

We've run too quick, too far, trying to maintain systems with, in HN jargon, too much technical debt. There are not enough people with solid knowledge, not enough people with solid principles, not enough people willing, to maintain the systems people in power have insisted on building. Frankly it's a miracle and a true testament to human greatness and luck that things aren't as bad as they very well could be. Over the long run however things usually end poorly, and history is littered with such shipwrecks. We need to slow down, refactor what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the consequences of not doing it worse.

[rb808]

The alternative is we could send our best and brightest developers to write social media apps, online shopping & high frequency trading algos. :)

[Arizhel]

>...not enough people willing, to maintain the systems people in power have insisted on building.

>We need to slow down, refactor what we can, rewrite what we cannot, the costs will be huge but the consequences of not doing it worse.

What's this "we" business? Are you volunteering for the job? There's not many people willing to work on such systems because there's obvious moral problems with them, and this means that the people you can get to work on them are probably not the most competent people around. I don't really see a solution for this. Either you force the "best and brightest" to leave Silicon Valley and go to someplace they don't want to live and work on WMDs that they are morally opposed to (doesn't sound like a recipe for quality work to me), or you have not-so-competent people working on them (also not a recipe for quality work). Maybe we should be rethinking our use of these things. Of course, that's not going to happen; our leaders insist on having them (and now want many more of them apparently), and the half of the population that voted for these leaders want them too (even though they're not smart enough to build them themselves).