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Stable softwareStable softwarePosted Dec 4, 2012 20:53 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Remarks about the benchmark by nix Parent article: Langasek: Upstart in Debian Not just for paranoid maniacs. "Stable" has two meanings: "robust" and "unchanging", and both are highly correlated: software that changes tends to be brittle. When clients say that they want software to be "stable" while it is changing I tend to think to myself "Well, don't change it then".
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Stable software Posted Dec 5, 2012 0:33 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Oh yes. We want it stable! Give us $new_feature yesterday!
Stable software Posted Dec 5, 2012 1:03 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Not just for paranoid maniacs. "Stable" has two meanings: "robust" and "unchanging", and both are highly correlated: software that changes tends to be brittle.
I don't buy that. There are dozens of projects that prove that it's perfectly possible to develop new features while not introducing regressions all the time, such as Apache httpd, Postfix, PostgreSQL and many others.
Robustness is primarily a result of good design, developer competence, care and good development practices, not of age and lack of changes. Sendmail has had much more time to mature than Postfix, yet the latter has had far fewer vulnerabilities. And BIND 8 was so broken that they decided to throw it away and start over, resulting in the much more robust BIND 9.
Stable software Posted Dec 5, 2012 10:21 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I agree; I should have specified "software that changes too fast". In my opinion, stability is a result of developing at the right speed and using good practices.Is there a way to quantify the right speed? Allow me to link my own post about reversible software development. Rushed developments are highly irreversible and always result in instabilities.
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