[MarkusWandel]

What this is talking about is tools.

If I have a 17mm combination wrench, that will work exactly the same way indefinitely. Nobody, hopefully, will upgrade "17mm bolt" to "17mm bolt v2.0" that is actually 17.1mm and make my wrench not fit.

Old software that does a specific thing, simply and standalone, can be a tool. Modern software, with a mindboggling variety of external dependencies, takes real effort to maintain in the "tool" model as dependencies change or retire. Take, for example an old video game that was fully debugged and released on physical media that can still be played (without even a physical machine, on archive.org) the same way. Versus a no longer maintained but treasured Android app or device, which falls behind and becomes unusable. Example: An old Android tablet that the kids use, was able to play Youtube videos. Then, somehow, it updated itself to a new Youtube version that's no longer compatible with it and now it can't, because Chrome has the same problem, and the native browser on there is too old to play web Youtube. Yet the device is still sound, still holds good battery charge and so on.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

So you have a 17mm wrench. It's awesome, feels great in the hand, solid on the nuts/bolts. It's a keeper and a winner.

Then one day you need to 17mm socket wrench.

A year later, you find yourself needing a 17mm deep socket wrench.

The year after that, you've got a scenario where the deep socket wrench would work, but requires a cheater bar, and there's no space, so you need a drive adapter to connect it to an impact wrench.

The following year, you start working on a vehicle where torque matters, and you need all of the above tools to work with a torque wrench.

6 months later, you realize you got a torque wrench that only goes up to 80 (units-of-torque) and now you need 100.

----

The difference with physical tools is that nobody will raise an eyebrow at you having all these variants of your 17mm wrench. By contrast, having all these variants of (to use TFA's example) a word processor would seem quite odd.

[slingnow]

I'm not clear what point you're trying to make here. The original point is describing the interface between the 17mm tool and the 17mm bolt, not all of the other tools that could possibly interface with a 17mm bolt.

Your other examples are a bit weird, because you're changing it from a wrench to a socket wrench. The interface is quite different:

Wrench -> Bolt

Driver -> Socket -> Bolt

Not to mention, all of your other examples illustrate that there's a perfectly fine interface between the 17mm socket and all of the various ways to drive it. The 17mm socket is complete software.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I don't agree with this characterization. The GP said "that will work exactly the same way indefinitely." which is correct, but doesn't capture the many subtleties of where and how you need to interact with a 17mm nut or bolt.

The owner of a 17mm combo wrench starts out with what appears to be the perfect tool for the job, but then comes to understand that the scope of interacting with a 17mm nut or bolt is wider than originally understood. They end up with a toolbox that is much more complex when it comes to "interacting with 17mm nuts and bolts" than they originally expected.

And so it goes with software too, not always, but extremely often.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

yeah!

that one time my toilet stayed the same for 5 WHOLE years, but you know, there are totally toilets with bidet's, toilets that are motion sensored, tall toilets, short toilets, toilets meant to squat over, ad nauseum.

so for this reason it's totally ok for YOUR toilet to need be replaced every few months! yeah, that conclusion absolutely follows from the premise.

or not, and maybe the other posters point is that there being other needs and variations doesn't mean a specific tool for a specific needs must always change.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I'm the lead author of a cross-platform digital audio workstation. We have a saying : every user needs just 20 features, but the problem is that all but 2 of the features are unique to that user. Obviously it bottoms out at some point, but 100 users means 1800 features, and 100 more users means adding at least another 1500. And people why "a specific tool for a specific needs must always change" - it's because we serving a constantly moving user target. [EDIT: the numbers are just BS, but the principle seems to be real-world]

More than that, most users of most sophisticated creation software have their own evolving needs, unlike GRR Martin and his word processing requirements. The program they needed last year, before their understanding of their own process and their own aesthetic goals expanded, isn't the program they need this year.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

You choose to do that, the point of the article is that you don't have to and there's something to be said about that.

[MarkusWandel]

At least the toilet:plumbing interface is standardized though!!

[tonyedgecombe]

>If I have a 17mm combination wrench, that will work exactly the same way indefinitely.

I had to transition my tools from imperial to metric in the early eighties.

[callalex]

Even that happens. Consider for example the shit-show that is JIS vs Philips vs PoziDriv for plus-shaped screw heads.

[thfuran]

>Take, for example an old video game that was fully debugged and released on physical media

A bug free game? I wish.