Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Technical Debt, and Wookiees™, in a Star Trek™ world

In information technology, the goal of design is 100% uptime, be it of the equipment infrastructure (and oh by the way we shouldn't be doing this anymore) or the application (it's really what we care about).

I often think of this as the Star Trek™ conundrum, where the desire is to have something absolutely perfected.  In this way, it will work the way you want it to, when you want it to, each time you want it to.

The components ideally fitted at the subatomic layer for exactness.  Software tested to be infallible. The entire system redundant with tolerances that leave no excuse for failure.  All parts upgrade-able and replaceable within a specification that meets the test of time.  Ultimately, the ideal of the star ship Enterprise.

In other words perfect.

This perfection ends up being quite expensive, so the tolerances are loosened.  The software is released in stages of development.  The parts have finite longevity with future specifications not well understood.  Redundancy placed where traditional mechanisms fail the most frequently.  Sort of like the Millennium Falcon.

So, there will be a really tall and hairy guy with an intergalactic spanner wrench banging on the console of a component that is failing due to something else failing in the power room, 100 meters away under the floor.  It is inevitable.

As the Wookiee™ is banging on the console, just remember that at some point it did the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

Maybe it's time to establish a new Kessel Run record.



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