modsec

This is an interesting story. Python breaks perfectly reasonable code which is surprisingly nothing new for Python. A tool stops working. Users want fix. Author of the tool is unavailable. The tool needs to be forked. A new name needs to be chosen. A new distribution point needs to be established.

All because Python chooses to break existing code.

Can't the software designers of this century choose to provide feature flags (use strict, use VERSION, etc.) to enable new features that break existing code?

There was a nice and popular article/blog post from someone famous about never ever breaking existing code or functionality because users depend on it but I cannot remember the title of that post to search it.

Like what? SpamAssassin? You would be surprised how much obvious spam gets through it in the face of the kind of spam onslaught that goes on in the real world today.

Seriously, this problem is not as easy to solve for machines as you think it is.

I see comments like this coming up on Hacker News almost every month and I tend to think that people who make these comments are either too young and/or have not worked for a mid-sized to a large company.

If you have worked in any company that deals with internet-facing traffic serving the size of audience that Twitter does, it should be obvious that 1k employees is nothing if you want to have all the necessary teams you need to keep the business running, for example, software engineering, software support, hardware engineering, hardware support, network engineering, software engineering, HR, finance, legal, PR, management, IT department, etc.

A company of this scale is not just code and raw technical skills. There are many nuances that you need to appreciate before you understand why it involves 1k-5k employees.

> idiots at Twitter

A constructive comment would have been to point us at good spam filters that are very good at not allowing obvious spam so that we do not make the same mistake that Twitter did and be labelled as "idiots" by the likes of you on the Internet.

What's a good alternative you would suggest?

I often have a similar problem and the fact is that most users hang out on platforms that suck like Twitter, Facebook, etc.

If I build my business on a decentralized platform like blockchain etc. I immediately lose 90% or even more of my target audience.

If I build my business on my own datacenter the cost and maintenance involved is staggeringly high.

Do you have a reasonable alternative that would allow small players like us to host large volumes of data (say about 1 TB to 2 TB) while completely controlling the ownership of the data?

I am missing the point of the article. Why does build failing require any incentive or punishment?

If a build fails, nothing changes in the production environment. The developer can troubleshoot and fix the build. Pretty much like when local compilation fails due to a syntax error.

Why does such a routine thing as a build failure need to be rewarded or punished?