

Why did why the lucky stiff quit? (2013) - dallagi
http://kevinw.github.io/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky-stiff-quit/

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grey-area
_why returns, as whimsical and obcure as ever. this was a great write-up, and
now I want to read the book. My favourite quote from the book:

 _What if Amerika [the novel by kafka] was only written for 32 bit PowerPC?_

I sometimes wonder the same sort of thing, when crafting software for iOS or
other platforms doomed to obsolecence by the exigencies of capitalism - all
that is solid melts into air, and while much of the data or content we produce
will probably last centuries and remain decipherable, I'm not so sure about
the code.

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jamessb
This, and _" A computer program will never live as long as the trial"_ remind
me of a comment by Godfrey Hardy in _A mathematician 's apology_:

"Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages
die and mathematical ideas do not. 'Immortality' may be a silly word, but
probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean."

~~~
grey-area
Are you equating computer code with scientific or mathematical works?

That seems akin to programmers calling themselves 'engineers' to me - more
pretension than reality. Some code will probably survive this age (some as
ephemera, some because it was so elegant as to approach pure maths), but much
of it is as ephemeral as the hardware it is written for, and I suspect that
which does survive will arrive in the future, like the works of Archimedes,
because it was recorded as part of a theory to be studied (e.g. in books
teaching principles of programming), _or_ because of happenstance and being
stored with other records - as ephemera and historical curiosity rather than
because it is valued. Of course _some_ will survive, and some will be highly
valued, but I suspect a limited amount.

In addition, I do think it is rather myopic of Godfrey Hardy in the above
quote (or _why in the one you have cited) to view mathematics as somehow more
fundamental than culture or vice versa – both are valued, and both will be
preserved to some extent and translated into future languages and systems of
thought. I preferred _why's more specific quote about PowerPC because it
points out that much programming work will be ephemeral on the order of
decades because of the nature of the systems it runs on - obsolescence is
built in by the corporations who control much of our digital landscape. Some
of that has changed with open source, but bit rot will doom code which can't
be run any more due to missing dependencies, and when it can't be run, what's
the point?

I'd say a potboiler novel from today has more chance of surviving one century
intact than the code which powers most startups or runs in most of the apps we
use day to day.

PS _A mathematician 's apology_ sounds interesting, I haven't read it and must
look it up. Thanks for the tip.

