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Comment Re:Maybe we should reduce complexity (Score 1) 45

Yeah, but even those things have been solved decades ago. For example if using HTML the browser will take care that it's accessible to people who cannot see or hear, and that it looks "good" regardless of what device you have. After all HTML does not specify how something looks like, only what structure it has.

And please don't get me started at "Enterprise Grade" software. We can do better than that. We can take the user into account, we can actually _fix_ bugs instead of creating an industry of software companies and consultants to sell workarounds.

Comment Maybe we should reduce complexity (Score 2) 45

After all "every 1000 lines" there is a bug, and every bug can be a security issue. Now while the number of 1000 if of course heavily disputed, a software project of a billion lines of code will have more bugs than one that has just a few thousands of lines.

Currently we often layer complexity on top of complexity, since it seems free. You can get some complex library to do something you don't actually need, since it's just an "import" statement away, and your build system downloads it automatically... and you can even package it into a Docker image so nobody will see it. Your trivial application uses Billions of lines of code, because you use a browser as a GUI toolkit and use some framework to be able to manage it, etc.

Some surprising thing I've noticed when trying to use AI to write software is that you can sidestep the problem. You can just tell the AI to write minimalist code and not use any unusual libraries... and it works. The programs are as short as you'd expect from a competent programmer. It's an interesting observation.

Maybe this could lead to less shitty software.

Comment Confusing signatures with trustworthyness (Score 1) 46

Signed code is not necessarily trustworthy. There is signed malware out there. Look at the mobile world, where everything is signed, but nothing is secure. (in the sense that it protects user data)
It's solving the wrong problem.

However there's a dark side to it. We have governments and companies trying to pass laws on how computers can be used. Having enforced signatures makes it easy to enforce such things.

Comment It's about keeping up the "New Space Legend" (Score 1) 112

"New Space" start-ups claim to be able to make orbital launches extremely cheap.

If you have any kind of start-up, it is vital that people believe that you can achieve your goal, regardless of how mundane of fantastical it is. If people stop believing that what you do is possible, you have lost. You need to keep up the "Legend" of your company, particularly if you have a long way to go. You cannot go to the moon or write yet another "to-do list app" if you don't believe in it.

So "New Space" startups have a very high interest in such demonstrations. And the demonstration is not that you can put a 1kW satellite into orbit, that's the trivial part of it, but that a company like Google, which has some credence, believes enough in it, that they do this little experimental project. Essentially it's an endorsement form Google, that they think "New Space" companies will eventually make orbital launches so cheap a data center in space makes sense. Of course since Google is probably invested in at least some of those companies, it only makes send in participating in such a project. After all that's funny money for them.

Comment Well the web is dying anyhow (Score 1) 128

I mean the "good old days" on the web were, when people just made websites. Every ISP came with some webspace, and you had simple to use HTML editors, often WYSIWIG. Even Word had a (terrible) HTML export.

There simply was no need for Facebook or Twitter, you just posted something on your website. You had actual E-Mail... without HTML it was completely harmless to open an e-mail.

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