>If we just accept "networks are unreliable and sometimes broken" as a fact of life, things will never get better. I applaud the unsung heroes who are finding and fixing the actual root causes of lower layers of our networks.
As developers, this should always be a fact of life. True, we should strive for making the networks perfect, but at the end of the day, these things still need to be accounted for.
Because you don't have control over a client deciding that 50 cent network cards are "good enough" for their deployment even though they've demanded five 9's uptime from your software.
Because you can't know when someone's going to spill beer on the switch.
Because someone's just going to pull the wrong cable.
Because the water company accidentally cut the line into the building.