Is there a slow software movement?

[thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io]

Is there a slow software movement?

as in a pledge to ship only well-tested and polished software and only do it very occasionally instead of deploying slop multiple times a day that your users will have to ingest like a king's food taster

[lu_leipzig@troet.cafe]

@thomasfuchs I don't know if there is, but there definitely should be!

[infoseepage@mastodon.social]

@thomasfuchs I really wish some of these programmers who've been fired from their jobs would get together and form some sort of collective to develop software strictly along conventional best practices and in ways which emphasize memory safety and long-term code maintainability.

[kingtor@frontrange.co]

@thomasfuchs if there is, I want the movement to take over the entertainment industry. Used to be you could figure out when something was stable when they moved on to a new version, then install the last of the old one, but they sure are making that hard to do. Especially Pro Tools with "version" number that are just dates with a build# after

[scott@typo.social]

@thomasfuchs This gem was shared a few years ago and I love the idea of “finished software”: https://josem.co/the-beauty-of-finished-software/

[linuxgnome@todon.eu]

@lu_leipzig @thomasfuchs

Slow, considered operating system: Debian.

[lu_leipzig@troet.cafe]

@linuxgnome @thomasfuchs Already daily-driving it 😎 But I think the original post was more about software development, and not so much distribution. At least that's how I understood it.

[heymarkreeves@mstdn.social]

@thomasfuchs

[dwlt@mastodon.me.uk]

@thomasfuchs I’ve read a few proposals on this over the years, currently all I can find is https://jpattonassociates.com/slow_software/ but I’m sure I’ve read others write about it, maybe Wil Shipley?

[sjcooke66@mastodon.social]

@thomasfuchs Isn't that Slackware?🤣

[designfactotum@hci.social]

@thomasfuchs retro- and recreational computing

[nazokiyoubinbou@urusai.social]

@thomasfuchs Well, Debian and Linux Mint both kind of do that.

Debian completely separates its testing stuff into not one but two separate branches that you have to go out of your way even to get to and they almost obsess over it being stable as heck before going to release with things going through testing twice over first.

I don't know how Linux Mint handles things internally, but they similarly obsess over it being stable. So much so that they still aren't even on Wayland yet.

People make the occasional joke, but both are very well respected in no small part due to that stability.

And as much as I appreciate some like Arch (especially some like CachyOS going out of their way to add processor optimizations) if I'm recommending something to someone it's probably Debian or Mint.

[deepbluev7@nheko.io]

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io I mean, I do get yelled at for how rarely I do releases, so I would say such software exists, but not sure if we are moving much.

[worldsworstgoth@hachyderm.io]

@thomasfuchs it probably says a lot that in 20+ years, the closest I have seen to Slow Principles (positive) in software has been for gov, not profit.

[breathoflife@infosec.exchange]

@worldsworstgoth @thomasfuchs

doesn't surprise me.

[datarama@hachyderm.io]

@thomasfuchs Today, I saw this little meditation from the developer of Gram, a fork of the Zed editor.

https://gram.liten.app/posts/go-slow-and-fix-things/

[amoshias@esq.social]

@thomasfuchs no. I have it on good authority that software only has to work until you sell the company.

[root42@chaos.social]

@thomasfuchs look at many old open source projects. TeX‘s development has basically become glacial at this point. Also DJ Bernstein used to make pretty solid software with limited feature sets and slow update cycles. qmail and the like.

[tuban_muzuru@beige.party]

@thomasfuchs

Bring this happy gospel to the C Suite, where contractors such as myself are asked to deliver things On Time and on Budget.

"well-tested" and "polished" are punch lines.