Bit freshener

Updates updates updates all the time. You have one! Get to work! Did anything change? No! Yes! Who knows? Quick, fix it! Did you break it? Who would know?

Updates are the opposite of bitrot.

The Jargon File, a compendium of hacker lore, defines “bit rot” as a jocular explanation for the degradation of a software program over time even if “nothing has changed”; the idea being this is almost as if the bits that make up the program were subject to radioactive decay.

Wikipedia

Wait, why quote Wikipedia quoting the Jargon File when I can just quote the Jargon File?

Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will often stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if ‘nothing has changed’.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/bit-rot.html

The important thing is that *bitrot does not exist.* I know that seems insanely obvious. Bits do not rot. They are purely abstract. They live forever. A bit is a bit for all time.

And yet if it is true then what are all these updates doing?


Now get to work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *