Most deployed programs need to be upgraded at some point. The reasons vary from adding new features to patching a bug and potentially fixing a broken state. Even though upgrades are an essential part of software development and maintenance, programming languages tend to not help the programmer deal with them in any way.
Devs aren't "lazy" and game updates aren't guaranteed | Opinion
Where did the demand that every game must be continually updated come from – and is there a way to avoid the friction it causes?
Useful tradeoffs are multi-dimensional.
In some pockets of the industry, an axiom of software development is that deploying software quickly is at odds with thoroughly testing that software. One reason that teams believe this is because a fully automated deployment process implies that there’s no opportunity for manual quality assurance. In other pockets of the industry, the axiom is quite different: you can get both fast deployment and manual quality assurance by using feature flags to decouple deployment (shipping the code) and release (enabling new functionality).
software rot
Software rot is generally thought of as degradation of software due to a changing environment. For example, a program written a decade ago may no longer work with new versions of the libraries it depends on because some of them have changed without retaining backwards compatibility. This kind of thinking encourages a culture where software becomes obsolete unless it is constantly maintained.
Regenerative Software - The Phoenix Architecture
Not just development, distribution of software may change as well - <antirez>
PHP developers issue updates to fix vulnerabilities, says flaw was found in 2024
Developers of the PHP programming language said a set of new updates fixing two previously identified critical vulnerabilities was now live, and acknowledged a delay in addressing a previously identified flaw.
Evaluations Are the Real Codebase - The Phoenix Architecture
Why behavior outlives implementations
Balancing “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” vs. “Release early and often”
Every organization faces a war between two schools of thought, with “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” on one side and “release early and often” on the other. This blog post looks for a way for enterprise consumers to embrace fast-paced changes in the software industry.
Software 4.0: When Code Stops Being an Artifact
The next step in Andrej Karpathy’s Software evolution: what happens when code is generated at runtime, executed once, and never saved…
Package Managers Need to Cool Down
A survey of dependency cooldown support across package managers and update tools.
Its Time for a New Programming Language
Today, when compared to any other point in programming history, we find ourselves spoiled for choice when it comes to programming…
proto - A multi-language version manager | moonrepo
Lightspeed version manager for programming languages and their dependency managers.
It's Time To Rethink Everything by @t3dotgg
Systems Programming with Zig
Zig delivers performance, reliability, and complex integration in systems programming in a simple, modern package. Zig hits the sweet spot for systems programming. This new programming language is high-performance, low-level, ultra-reliable, and perfectly suited for serious projects like writing libraries, daemons and shell utilities, and even operating systems and embedded code. Systems Programming with Zig shows you how to write quality, useful Zig applications without relying on libraries or frameworks-even if you’re new systems programming. In Systems Programming with Zig you’ll learn how to: Understand the Zig perspective on systems programming Write idiomatic Zig code Integrate Zig with C, systems libraries, and scripting languages Networking, interpreters, and graphics from the ground up Unlike UI-centric applications that form the public face of your software, systems programs like OS kernels, device drivers, and utilities interact directly with the hardware or operating system. In these low-level programs, performance and safety are paramount. Zig is a new programming language that builds on the legacy of C, C++, and even Rust to provide a high-productivity systems programming environment that does not rely on awkward libraries and frameworks.
Code Is Cheap Now. Software Isn’t.
The barrier to entry for building software has collapsed. The barrier to building something that matters hasn’t moved an inch.