On Long Term Software Development

Much software is now provided as a service, and is typically deployed continuously (CD, continuous deployment), surrounded by enough automated testing (CI, continuous integration) that we can be reasonably sure that a new revision is likely to at least work to some extent.

In contrast, there is also still a huge world where people don’t appreciate such continuous changes combined with only a pretty good likelihood of things working. Software that controls (nuclear) power plants, elections, pacemakers, airplanes, bridges, heavy machinery. In general, stuff that can kill you if it does the wrong thing, or perhaps simply by not working.

These fields appreciate your software sticking around for decades, with well described and pre-announced changes. Release notes that go beyond “various bug fixes and improvements”. Software that might not see any changes for a few years, after which a new major release gets planned, and stuff still needs to build from source.