John C Klensin wrote:
--On Sunday, October 23, 2022 12:48 -0400 Miles Fidelman
<mfidelman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well... I was thinking more of "we" as an industry. I sure
remember having to pass various validation tests when
delivering systems, back in the day. As well as regression
tests when shipping updates. These days, the world seems to
have moved to release early & often, then fix bugs when
someone opens a ticket. (I miss working in perl - where the
norm is to include automatic regression testing in every
makefile.)
Yes. If your comment was about "the industry", broadly defined,
you are absolutely right. We could have a rather long
discussion, one that would benefit from lubrication with
appropriate beverages, about whether those validation tests and
regression testing were, on average, enough fit for purpose to
be worth the trouble. They were much better (and large
investments were made in them) in situations where those
involved were told "get it wrong and people die" but those cases
were, relatively speaking, rare.
True... and the world I come out of.
Somehow, "get it wrong and millions of passwords leak" or "... billions
of dollars go missing" don't quite have the same sense of urgency.
I probably have even less sympathy than you do for the newer
model you describe (one that I usually describe as "who cares
about beta test or even alpha test, just ship it and the users
will figure out what is wrong and tell us".
I think not. You probably haven't seen my rants on "agile considered
harmful" and the like
But, if it about the industry and not the IETF and/or the
Internet specifically, let's get it off this list.
Arguably, things like loss of interoperability & the return of walled
gardens, and other things that run diametrically opposed to the original
intent of the net, might be important topics for IETF... as those of us
who date to the early days start disappearing, youngsters seem to be
repeating the mistakes of the past. Sigh...
Miles
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why. ... unknown
