"Those nerds" aren't the ones calling the shots. The decisions are being made by the same people who want the company's original 1970s COBOL application to keep running until the heat death of the universe. "Those nerds" would rewrite the thing if they were allowed to, but they're not.
The Web has the same problem with ancient deployments that management thinks should just keep working unchanged for decades. The problem hasn't been solved for the Web, and also hasn't been solved in other fields, hence you still see listings for COBOL programmers.
> The decisions are being made by the same people who want the company's original 1970s COBOL application to keep running until the heat death of the universe.
Neither Google nor Mozilla have COBOL applications from the 1970's.
Given what I've heard from people who work on Chrome say about the people who work on MSFT's browser, MSFT has recently also become very interested in making software development for a web browser easier, better, and safer.
> The Web has the same problem with ancient deployments that management thinks should just keep working unchanged for decades.
We're talking about new features marked as experimental and unstable by the folks who write and maintain the browser that implements that feature. As I said in a previous comment, even Microsoft has the backbone to break in-the-field software that makes use of undocumented or experimental APIs.
We're not talking about changing or removing XMLHttpRequest. We're talking about changing or removing blink-experimental-webgl-blink-tag-over-web-rtc-ea59f01.
We're talking about new features marked as experimental and unstable by the folks who write and maintain the browser that implements that feature.
And when the manager says "deadline is next week", and the new and EXPERIMENTAL and UNSTABLE (gasp) feature is the only way to get it done, you use it.
Now, good luck getting permission to go back and clean up technical debt.
> And when the manager says "deadline is next week", and the new and EXPERIMENTAL and UNSTABLE (gasp) feature is the only way to get it done, you use it.
I fail to see how a manager's failure to understand that you cannot rely on features that are subject to breaking change or removal at any time, without warning is Google's, Microsoft's or Mozilla's problem.
> Now, good luck getting permission to go back and clean up technical debt.
If your site breaks because the experimental feature that your manager forced you to use was radically changed or removed -as per the widely advertised, well-known policy regarding experimental features-, and your manager doesn't give you permission to fix the mess he forced you into, you -as the programmer- have nothing to worry about. This is clearly a failure of management. :)
Will that stop this manager from yelling at you? Probably not. Will this stop you from getting fired? Maybe not. But, seriously: If you get fired because your manager ignored your expert recommendation that his plan would lead to disaster, and -a little while later- his plan leads to disaster, you were working for a very unreasonable boss. It would only be a matter of time until you were fired for some other equally stupid reason.
If -on the other hand- you commit to doing something that you later find out is not possible, and you don't own up to your mistake, whatever fallout comes from the stupid things you do to cover up your mistake is your own damn fault.
"Those nerds" aren't the ones calling the shots. The decisions are being made by the same people who want the company's original 1970s COBOL application to keep running until the heat death of the universe. "Those nerds" would rewrite the thing if they were allowed to, but they're not.
The Web has the same problem with ancient deployments that management thinks should just keep working unchanged for decades. The problem hasn't been solved for the Web, and also hasn't been solved in other fields, hence you still see listings for COBOL programmers.