alt Hacker NewsYeah, we traded managing files and registry entries on desktops for something that violates all the principles of the science-of-systems, the kind of thing Perrow warns about in his book Normal Accidents.
Yeah, we traded managing files and registry entries on desktops for something that violates all the principles of the science-of-systems, the kind of thing Perrow warns about in his book Normal Accidents.
I think that's oversimplifying it a bit. Managing files and registry entries wasn't much of a problem, but supporting an ever-growing matrix of versions across multiple platforms that were released into the wild was an issue. Modern evergreen apps kind of fix this, but you're still dealing with other people's computers and environments. Operating a service reliably is of course filled with different problems, but at least you have full control.