I understand the reluctance but it feels to me like arguing “we should just stick with COBOL because it works.”

For those depending on COBOL code that does the job and has been doing it just well for a few decades, there are approximately zero good reasons to not stick with it.

Ha, I’ll steal that! “Karen compiler” - quite fitting, to be honest.

Maybe it’s not your profession but a hobby but the point stands.

To be honest, I’ve hardly ever asked myself how I could best please a potential employer with any of my hobbies. But I recognise that you’re probably taking a different approach.

It also expands your employment potential and general usefulness.

I have already mentioned that programming is not everyone’s profession. Not everyone chooses what they do in their unpaid free time primarily based on whether it makes them a more useful person. I think the very phrase ‘my usefulness’ is dangerous.

Are we only worth something as drones?

Why? I mean, I, personally, try to be as polyglot as possible, but not everyone working on the Linux kernel is even interested in doing anything that’s not C kernel code, nor is it their profession.

even though Rust is objectively better.

In some of its characteristics, Rust is certainly a good language. The borrow checker, however, still haunts my restless dreams today.

Developers who are not willing to learn something new and not adapt are the worst.

And this is why COBOL developers are desperately needed these days: because too many people think that “old” was the same thing as “needs a replacement”.

They have not.

xkcd

OpenBSD seems to be able to have branches (CURRENT and STABLE), and they seem to be able to manage them just fine.

Yes, it is, because it does the job. Why exactly shouldn’t they?

A Windows zero-day vulnerability recently patched by Microsoft was exploited by hackers working on behalf of the North Korean government so they could install custom malware that’s exceptionally stealthy and advanced, researchers reported Monday.

I am always amazed at how easy it is for ‘security researchers’ to speculate about which government is solely responsible for exploiting security vulnerabilities.

Most groups of people who write code have one person to report to.

You don’t need to install SQLite to use Fossil, as Fossil already contains the (newest) version of SQLite, given that both tools come from the same developer.

In my experience, Git is harder to use than Fossil and if shit hits the fan, it is much harder to unshit the fan. There are reasons why there are numerous tutorials and books about how to tame Git. I don’t want to have to tame the tools that I use every day.

And yes, most tools are not Linux. Linux is a huge bazaar (with one BFDL, but that’s optional). Most real-life projects are a cathedral though, and Git just doesn’t mirror this.

It depends on the outer circumstances, I think. Using the prevalent tool makes sense in existing environments (which is one of the reasons why many companies use SVN - it worked for them before Git existed and it still works for them, so why not?). For new projects, one-man teams and/or companies starting from scratch, Git might not always be the best choice.

True.

SVN has become notably better over the past few years, but let me clarify that my comment was not meant as a reason to use SVN.

Ubiquity is not always the most relevant decision. (Especially as most VCS which aren’t Git :-) are easy enough to understand - most of them are even easier than Git in my opinion.)

“The standard tool” is not a constant. When I started programming with other people, CVS was “the standard tool”.

There is also the following consideration: Most VCSs work very similarly. It makes no difference to anyone I can think of which VCS they should use. Why would someone who can write “git pull” suddenly despair of (for example) “fossil update”?

Git also has numerous disadvantages for me, including the improvable merging, the contradictory command line commands, the cluttering of the .git folder with numerous metafiles and so on. What’s wrong with using the best tool for the job and not the one that “everyone uses”? The supposed advantage that everyone already knows Git (haha, who really “knows” Git?) is outweighed by its disadvantages in my opinion.

Fossil, to stick with this example, also has some advantages for me as an administrator: Each repository is a single SQLite file (easy to backup, easy to repair, easy to host - without complicated infrastructure, a web server is enough).

The internet spoiled me.