commit: 79575299d7c31e2e26e3014e68ade3daa2f902d2
parent 855d8757d4dc18504cc19fb6a71970ae739df5b6
Author: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2021 09:45:16 +0200
Reliability
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1 file changed, 99 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/Reliability.md b/content/blog/Reliability.md
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+---
+title: Software developers have stopped caring about reliability
+date: 2021-10-17
+---
+
+Of all the principles of software engineering which has fallen by the wayside in
+the modern "move fast and break things" mentality of ~~assholes~~ modern
+software developers, reliability is perhaps the most neglected, along with its
+cousin, robustness. Almost all software that users encounter in $CURRENTYEAR is
+straight-up broken, and often badly.
+
+Honestly, it's pretty embarassing. Consider all of the stupid little things
+you've learned how to do in order to work around broken software. Often
+something as simple as refreshing the page or rebooting the program to knock
+some sense back into it — most users can handle that. There are much
+stupider problems, however, and they are *everywhere*. Every morning, I boot,
+then immediately hard-reboot, my workstation, because it seems to jigger my
+monitors into waking up properly to do their job. On many occasions, I have used
+the browser dev tools to inspect a broken web page to figure out how to make it
+do the thing I want to do,[^1] usually something complicated like submitting a
+form properly (a solved problem since 1993).
+
+[^1]: Or to remove the rampant ads, spyware, nagbars, paywalls, newsletter pop-ups, and spam. Do not add this shit to your website. Don't you *dare* write that code.
+
+When the average person (i.e. a non-nerd) says they "don't get computers", I
+believe them. It's not because they're too lazy to learn, or because they're
+backwards and outdated, or can't keep with the times. It's because computers are
+hard to understand. They are enegmatic and unreliable. **I** know that when my
+phone suddenly stops delivering SMS messages mid-conversation, it's not because
+I've been abandoned by my friend, but because I need to toggle airplane mode to
+reboot the modem. **I** know that when I middle click a link and "javascript:;"
+opens in a new tab, ~~an asshole~~ a developer wants me to left click it
+instead. Most people don't understand this! You and I, dear reader, have built
+up an incredible amount of institutional knowledge about how to deal with broken
+computers. We've effectively had to reverse engineer half the software we've
+encountered to figure out just where to prod it to make it do the thing you
+asked. If you don't have this background, then computers are a nightmare.
+
+It's hard to overstate just how much software developers have given the finger
+to reliability in the past 10 years or so. It's for the simplest, silliest
+reasons, too, like those web forms. My web browser has been perfectly competent
+at submitting HTML forms for the past 28 years, but for some stupid reason some
+~~asshole~~ developer decided to reimplement all of the form semantics in
+JavaScript, and now I can't pay my electricity bill without opening up the dev
+tools. Imagine what it's like to not know how to do that. Imagine if you were
+blind.
+
+Folks, this is not okay. Our industry is characterized by institutional
+recklessness and a callous lack of empathy for our users. It's time for a
+come-to-jesus moment. This is our fault, and yes, dear reader, you are included
+in that statement. We are personally responsible for this disaster, and we must
+do our part to correct it.
+
+This is what you must do.
+
+You must prioritize simplicity. You and I are not smart enough to be clever, so
+don't try. As the old saying goes, there are two kinds of programs: those simple
+enough to obviously have no bugs, and those complicated enough to have no
+obvious bugs. The simpler the system is, the easier it is to reason about all of
+its states and edge cases. You do not need a JavaScript-powered custom textbox
+widget. YOU DO NOT NEED A JAVASCRIPT-POWERED CUSTOM TEXTBOX WIDGET.
+
+On the subject of state, state is the language of robustness. When something
+breaks, it's because a state occured that you didn't plan for. Think about your
+program in terms of this state. Design data structures that cannot represent
+invalid states (within reason), and then enumerate each of those possible states
+and *check* that your application does something reasonable in that situation.
+
+Identify your error cases, plan for them, implement that plan, and then *test
+it*. Sometimes things don't work! Most languages give you tools to identify
+error cases and handle them appropriately, so use them. And again, for the love
+of god, *test it*. If you commit and push a line of code that you have not
+personally watched run and work as expected, you have failed to do your job
+properly.
+
+Prefer to use proven technologies. If you use unproven technologies, you must
+use them scarcely, and you must *personally* understand them at an intimate
+level. If you haven't read the source code for the brand-new database engine you
+heard about on HN two weeks ago, you shouldn't be putting it into
+production.[^2]
+
+[^2]: If you don't have *access* to the source code, then you definitely should not be using it.
+
+Finally, stop letting economics decide everything you do. Yes, developers have
+finite time, and that time costs. Yes, users with annoying needs like
+accessibility and internationalization are more expensive to support than the
+returns they produce. *You need to pay for it anyway*. It's the right thing to
+do. We can be profitable *and* empathetic. Don't think about rushing to market
+first, and instead prioritize getting a *good product* into your user's hands.
+Our users are not cattle. It is not our job to convert attention into money at
+their expense. We need to treat users with respect, and that means testing our
+goddamn code before we ship it.
+
+---
+
+Do an exercise with me. Grab a notepad and make a note every time you encounter
+some software bug in production (be it yours or someone else's), or need to rely
+on your knowledge as a computer expert to get a non-expert system to work.
+[Email me](mailto:sir@cmpwn.com) your list in a week.
