[HN Gopher] Worst practices are viral for the wrong reasons (2014)
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       Worst practices are viral for the wrong reasons (2014)
        
       Author : throwaway81523
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2022-01-26 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.haskellforall.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.haskellforall.com)
        
       | overgard wrote:
       | I think sqlite is a good counterpoint for the open source
       | scenario. Rarely has any problems but its used all over the place
        
         | WJW wrote:
         | Sqlite is also an outlier in the open source world in that it
         | has an extremely decent funding model (basically premium
         | support). This has enabled continued work on it for 20+ years
         | by the same author and a small team of people he hired for this
         | work. Just the sheer lifespan of the project makes sure it
         | generates the buzz-over-time that TFA mentions as the lifeblood
         | of software projects.
        
       | dkarl wrote:
       | A related phenomenon: developers who generate a ton of LOC,
       | create new services willy-nilly, and adopt new technologies to
       | cure their boredom have the greatest impact on coding norms in an
       | organization.
       | 
       | Developers who solve problems with less code and less complexity,
       | and check to see if libraries already in use have the
       | functionality they need before adopting new ones, those
       | developers are less visible in the codebase, and it isn't obvious
       | that others should see them as leaders and role models.
        
       | JamesLeonis wrote:
       | Interestingly I see a form of #2 in the Clojure community
       | whenever a newer Clojurist asks if a stable library is still
       | maintained. The answer is usually yes, but it hasn't needed an
       | update for a while. Sometimes even I have to double check.
        
       | deltree7 wrote:
       | If your software is too perfect, almost always it needs new
       | features. If it's too perfect and becomes popular then every user
       | requests a new feature.
       | 
       | So, there is no such thing as a perfect software/library being
       | done.
        
         | throwaway1777 wrote:
         | nothing is done, but stable and not needing frequent updates is
         | totally possible. Pushing back on new features is often a key
         | part of stability.
        
       | SQueeeeeL wrote:
       | The point of using Stack Overflow questions as a metric is very
       | intriguing. I never thought about the negative feedback loop of
       | popular libraries just being buggy.
       | 
       |  _cough_ PyTorch _cough_
        
         | marcosdumay wrote:
         | That's not even the largest bias. Stack Overflow ranking is
         | mostly defined by a software's popularity divided by the
         | quality of its documentation. The quality of the software
         | itself is far away in relevance.
        
       | defanor wrote:
       | An interesting thought. I keep finding it amusing how I learn a
       | bit more about the buggy and vulnerable software, via a security
       | announcements mailing list, while not hearing unexpectedly about
       | the software that is more secure.
       | 
       | One of the comments to the linked article also mentions the
       | principal-agent problem, though not by name; an interesting and
       | tricky one, and likely indeed can happen in a software
       | development setting.
        
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