[delusional]

> Software rots

No it does not. I hate that analogy so much because it leads to such bad behavior. Software is a digital artifact that can does not degrade. With the right attitude, you'd be able to execute the same binary on new machines for as long as you desired. That is not true of organic matter that actually rots.

The only reason we need to change software is that we trade that off against something else. Instructions are reworked, because chasing the universal Turing machine takes a few sacrifices. If all software has to run on the same hardware, those two artifacts have to have a dialogue about what they need from each other.

If we didnt want the universal machine to do anything new. If we had a valuable product. We could just keep making the machine that executes that product. It never rots.

[dahcryn]

yes it does.

If software is implicitly built on wrong understanding, or undefined behaviour, I consider it rotting when it starts to fall apart as those undefined behaviours get defined. We do not need to sacrifice a stable future because of a few 15 year old programs. Let the people who care about the value that those programs bring, manage the update cycle and fix it.

[eblume]

Software is written with a context, and the context degrades. It must be renewed. It rots, sorry.

[igouy]

You said it's the context that rots.

[bayindirh]

It's a matter of perspective, I guess...

When you look from the program's perspective, the context changes and becomes unrecognizable, IOW, it rots.

When you look from the context's perspective, the program changes by not evolving and keeping up with the context, IOW, it rots.

Maybe we anthropomorphize both and say "they grow apart". :)

[igouy]

We say the context has breaking changes.

We say the context is not backwards compatible.

[smilliken]

Can you see how this comes off as a pedantic difference? If I ran a program 10 years ago and it worked, then run it today and it doesn't work, we say the program is broken and needs to be updated. We don't say the world around it is broken and needs to revert back to its original state.

[igouy]

We do revert back to a previous context if that seems practical: revert back to a previous compiler or library version.

[indymike]

>> Software rots > No it does not.

I'm thankful that it does, or I would have been out of work long ago. It's not that the files change (literal rot), it is that hardware, OSes, libraries, and everything else changes. I'm also thankful that we have not stopped innovating on all of the things the software I write depends on. You know, another thing changes - what we are using the software for. The accounting software I wrote in the late 80s... would produce financial reports that were what was expected then, but would not meet modern GAAP requirements.

[kstrauser]

That’s not what the phrase implies. If you have a C program from 1982, you can still compile it on a 1982 operating system and toolchain and it’ll work just as before.

But if you tried to compile it on today’s libc, making today’s syscalls… good luck with that.

Software “rots” in the sense that it has to be updated to run on today’s systems. They’re a moving target. You can still run HyperCard on an emulator, but good luck running it unmodded on a Mac you buy today.

[zahlman]

> You can still run HyperCard on an emulator, but good luck running it unmodded on a Mac you buy today.

I grew up with HyperCard, so I had a moment of sadness here.

[kstrauser]

We all have our own personal HyperCard.

[rocqua]

Fair point, but there is an interesting question posed.

Software doesn't rot, it remains constant. But the context around it changes, which means it loses usefulness slowly as time passes.

What is the name for this? You could say 'software becomes anachronistic'. But is there a good verb for that? It certainly seems like something that a lot more than just software experiences. Plenty of real world things that have been perfectly preserved are now much less useful because the context changed. Consider an Oxen-yoke, typewriters, horse-drawn carriages, envelopes, phone switchboards, etc.

It really feels like this concept should have a verb.

[igouy]

obsolescence

[zahlman]

>execute the same binary

Only if you statically compile or don't upgrade your dependencies. Or don't allow your dependencies to innovate.