Good points, and I mostly agree with you, especially with feedback loops!

Still, I never argued for waterfall. This is a false dichotomy which - again - comes from the agile BS crowd. The waterfall UML diagram upfront, model driven and other attempts of the 90s/early 20s were and are BS, which was obvious for most of us developers, even back then.

Very obviously requirements can change because of various reasons, things sometimes have to be tried out etc. I keep my point, that there has to exist requirements and a plan first, so one can actually find meaningful feedback loops, incorporate feedback meaningfully and understand what needs to be adapted/changed and what ripple effects some changes will have.

Call it an iterative process with a focus on understanding/learning. I refuse to call this in any way agile. :-P

… I cannot count the number of times at my different workplaces where we had an agile process, dailies and everything else of the agile BS for projects which where either trivial or not solvable. No worries, the managers, product owners and agile coaches made money and felt good, we developers went for greener pastures…

Agile is a scam, nothing they do is based on any facts and when you challenge agile coaches / other people which profit it is always ‘I believe’ or ‘proven by anecdote’.

Combine this with the low quality of people in the average software projects and you have a receipt for failure.

Writing the requirements first at least forces people to think trough a project (even if only superficial), so I am not surprised the success rates for this projects goes up.

Source

Very nice, should be a top level post so nobody misses it! :-)

Don’t worry, while you are waiting for Windows to react to your input, you can enjoy watching some ads in the near future! :-)

• Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu

I love C, but C definitely is the problem.

While one disciplined programmer can in theory write correct code, once there is a small group of even good C programmers and a code base with more than around 3000-5000 LOC, there will be bugs. There is a good reason for tools like Valgrind etc.

While I think C and C++ are the problem, I don’t think Rust is the solution, tho.

Sorry, wasn’t aware of the other posts but will do my due diligence in the future!

Thank you for the heads up!

Add to that, that every news is owned by someone, makes a minimum of 50% of its revenue from ads, and gets the rest of its revenue from paying customers from a class with expandable income who don’t want their worldview challenged or destroyed… It is really scary, how easy it is to manipulate public opinion by simple strategically choosing how facts are reported (pictures of humans vs. reporting numbers, wording, etc.), which facts are reported in the first way and where to position the information (top of page vs. footer). It is fun to call out Russia, instead calling out the ruling class, companies, the western governments etc. They all lie and they all try to control/direct public discourse.

Great write up, thank you very much!

I expect Google to keep Mozilla/Firefox on the lifeline indefinitely to avoid antitrust issues in the states and EU, so Mozilla/Firefox won’t go anywhere.

Still, this doesn’t mean anything, because I often need Chrome or Safari to access some websites.

In the end it is quite funny: Moving a lot of stuff to the web made Linux a more realistic desktop option, at the same time to access a lot of stuff on the web one needs to run a Blink browser.

IMHO the most annoying thing is, that we could have at least some laws, which mandate that every government service must be available to Open Source users and every government paid software must run on at least Linux. Thanks to lobbying and power this will never happen.

Edit: To state it more clearly: Firefox is IMHO in bad shape and in a bad situation. Firefox won’t die, but at the same time right now I already need Chrome/Safari browsers, because Firefox support is broken on many sites. I see no way Firefox can gain significant market share, especially seeing what regular consumers tolerate from Microsoft/Edge and Google/Chrome.

I agree with your points, but by that logic, Google (Android), Apple and all other smartphone/smart appliances provider should be sued, too. Think about FaceTime(?), Apple Safari (where they even force their shitty browser engine on iOS on you) etc.

If we all agree that this bundles are a problem, the solution is simply: Don’t allow any bundling at all, for no one.

Microsoft does Microsoft things.

I complain about the EU and my own technical incompetent government for a simple reason:

For years now, we have Open Source Software that is good enough ™ for the public sector, and for example the French police showed already that you can move to Linux (https://www.zdnet.com/article/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux/).

The EU should get independent of Microsoft for something so important like the IT infrastructure, instead of painting lipstick on a pig.

Edit: And if the EU is independent from Microsoft, I would prefer to use a messaging system like Matrix instead of blowing money into something like Slack.

I totally grasp the situation. The same could be said about notepad.exe, the File Explorer and everything else that comes preinstalled with Windows. According to the preinstalled logic, Windows should just be delivered with a kernel to even the competition.

AFAIK Slack is a Startup, backed by VC. If we would speak about Sublime Text vs. Notepad.exe, we might have ethical/moral grounds for a discussion.

Edit: … and just to be more clear: We have SublimeText, Directory Opus etc. - great software from great teams, which can survive although they compete with preinstalled software on Microsoft Windows. If Slack would provide something really valuable, Teams wouldn’t have had such an easy play. Same is true for Zoom.

Thanks for your elaboration, I am not qualified to know or answer, if Microsoft broke the law concerning Teams.

I am referring to the motivation for Slack to file a complaint, look at the numbers (50 vs 300 millions) which clearly show that Slack is loosing. Do you seriously imply that Slack is filing their complaint to reduce bloatware? (In that case, I am happy to see Slack starting to debloat their client. :-P)

As I already said, I am no fan of Teams, Microsoft, etc. but IMHO by now everyone grown up can decide what messenger app to install, there is enough competition (Apple, Linux) on the desktop for people who want less/different bloatware.

I am just seriously tired of the EU investing time and energy in this bullshit instead of investing energy in important/useful topic for its citizens.

Seriously, this is so ridiculous: So Slack filed a complain because their chat application looses against Teams?

I mean, Slack could have like innovated and make their application really, really good so that customers choose Slack over Teams because of the value it brings.

Instead they go the legal/lobbyist way and cry because a chat application obviously isn’t a forever gold mine.

The EU being technically illiterate and dump enough to play along is even more ridiculous than Slacks entitlement.

(For the record: I don’t like Teams, Office, Microsoft, Slack etc… but this is just such an obvious/bullshit lobbyist move.)