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Comment by adambatkin | Hacker News Reader

And yet it all still works.

Technology is more complicated than even a few years ago. It can do more. It is accessible to more people (and all of their unique needs and abilities). Computers have the ability to make an almost infinite number of interconnections with other computers.

The point is that a single person can't possibly keep track of a sufficient quantity of information to direct a sufficiently complex system anymore. And with the communication and development tools available today we are able to build these complex layered solutions without always having to worry about all of the other details that we can't possibly worry about.

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Well, at least until you realize that your image library has a security hole in it, or that your crypto library is so complex that it's not really possible to audit it in its current form.

The author's latest blog post says that exactly: "Quality Software Costs Money - Heartbleed Was Free" [0]

[0]: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2636165

> The author's latest blog post says that exactly: "Quality Software Costs Money - Heartbleed Was Free"

And it was transmitted across the Internet, something which literally could not exist without free (in every sense of the word) software.

Irony is an important part of your diet, kids.

> Irony is an important part of your diet, kids.

It certainly is, since the author of said article contributes heavily to freebsd. You know what else is an important part of your diet, kids? Reading and thinking before speaking.

This is simply insulting and childish.

Did I misread your comment? I took it as an insult on the author, but re-reading it I can see where it could have been just a humorous observation. Could you clarify?

>>Technology is more complicated than even a few years ago. It can do more. It is accessible to more people (and all of their unique needs and abilities). Computers have the ability to make an almost infinite number of interconnections with other computers.

Infinite? Hardly. This is hyperbole and bombast. One wonders what your measure of complexity is? Hardware is not more complex than a few years ago (processor instruction pipelining and caching was being done in the 80's for example). Languages are no more complex, although there will always be a fresh crop every year (has been since th 60's).

The complexity I will grant is that in large applications and interacting processes. But large systems have been complex since forever (50 million loc cobol mainframe apps) and intercommunition today is much simpler than 10 years ago (SOAP vs REST, xml vs json).

So the perception of increasing complexity is due to lack of perspective, imo.

It's only got that complex because nobody has been in a place to enforce simplicity. I strongly believe that it's possible to have systems with today's capabilities without today's complexities, but I don't think you can get there from here.

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