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by dijit 1064 days ago
> Yes. If you have embedded software in the field and it is running on hardware that has not reached its EOL, then you absolutely should be fixing bugs and vulnerabilities

Ok, I'll be the unpopular person here.

Some bugs, even security ones: are ok.

I know that a very significant amount of software is mature these days, but sometimes upgrading causes different bugs, which are either harder to diagnose or even potentially more deadly.

I work in gamedev though, releases are tradeoffs with which bugs we accept.

It is very frequently the case that fixing one bug will incur several other bugs, it's just a case of understanding if they're worse or not.

For example: I don't care that my TV will have a 1/100 crash when launching the settings. I will just launch settings again-

Coincidentally: having everything constantly updating and internet connected is counter-intuitive. I used to spend entire evenings waiting for my PS4 to install new software on itself, but the PS2 (which contained many bugs!) worked much more often.

2 comments

A known bug beats an unknown update in a whole lot of enterprise use cases. This drives devs insane but it is true.
Yes, there's substantial value in being able to have a specific bugfix and not have to upgrade an application and a ton of dependencies.
Or not even a fix. A known bug can be mitigated or worked around. Predictable is better.
It’s a limitation in SemVer too. Fixing a bug in a point release (e.g. keeping the api the same) could still result in undesired changes.
That brings flashbacks of my PS3. I had one, but I ended up not playing it because every time I switched it on there was a 2 hour mandatory download.

When you only have a couple of hours free time, spending it updating firmware means that I just don't update or use it.