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by miles7 2323 days ago
One thing I didn't see mentioned about creating software is that the tools and the systems often have serious problems to begin with, even before you start writing a program.

Some well known examples are:

- major programming languages such as C don't do enough to help with memory safety issues

- lack of explicit types in python function arguments can lead to surprising bugs which recur again and again

- operating systems and platforms, such as different web browsers, adhere to widely different conventions about how dependencies on other libraries and code is managed

1 comments

> the tools and the systems often have serious problems

And running a train over a floating bridge has serious problems, but it is done. These software "problems" are trivial compared to algorithmic complexity when analyzing 10billion events a day in countless ways realtime.