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Sorry, but we seem to be talking completely at cross-purposes here.

My previous comment was not really about the realities of civil engineering. It was about how absurd civil engineering would be, if the routine maintenance done in that context failed as often and as spectacularly as software updates do.

To be more blunt about it: Organisations don't want software that updates itself frequently and fallibly, because they simply can't afford to have basic functionality going out of service every few weeks, complete and possibly permanent loss of compatibility with critical services from time to time, and the design and UI changing at random in ways that are confusing to users.




I agree that we're probably talking past each other, re: civil/software engineering.

The entire reason to do frequent, small updates, instead of large, spectacular updates is to avoid all the problems you mention in the last paragraph.

In that case, it actually does become quite a bit like civil engineering, in that if they keep relatively minor repaving a lane every year, without disrupting traffic completely, they can avoid the entire road failing spectacularly and having to be blocked off to rebuild. Of course I don't really know much about civil engineering...

Cheers, anyway.


The entire reason to do frequent, small updates, instead of large, spectacular updates is to avoid all the problems you mention in the last paragraph.

So the theory goes, but I'm not sure there's really any such thing as a small update if you're talking about software used by hundreds or thousands of staff that provides the platform on which tens or even hundreds or important business applications are built.

If you're talking strictly about security updates, which are intended to address an identified vulnerability without making any other change, then I would agree there's an argument for making those more frequently.

Unfortunately, many of the key players, including those producing the evergreen browsers, make little or no distinction between essential security fixes and other changes, and at that point the risk/reward ratio of accepting frequent updates can change rather sharply.




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