Talk:2398: Vaccine Tracker

2020-12-15T21:22:03Z

162.158.155.78:

🎵 A B C D E F G H I've got a cure! 🎶
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.85|162.158.74.85]] 02:53, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Maybe he needs a [[2382: Ballot Tracker Tracker|vaccine tracker tracker]] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.40|162.158.78.40]] 03:24, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
:And if that goes missing, a vaccine tracker tracker finder? Then a—[[952: Stud Finder|shut up]].
:Or a [[2376: Curbside|vaccine tracer tracer]], but then if he loses it [[1504: Opportunity|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA]] and that transmission, at 05:52, 15 December 2020 (UTC) was the last we ever heard from Sonata. [[User:Bubblegum|bubblegum]]-[[User_talk:Bubblegum|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Bubblegum|contribs]]

And this on a day when I was mindlessly updating the pointless Electoral College votes just to double check that there were no faithless voters throwing the thing into more confusion. And I am not even American. Iam in priority group eight. My wife is in group nine - but might be in group eight before they get to her. The only things I know about kalamazoo are payroll and guitars - but I believe one is long superceded and the other left. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 12:29, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Just learnt that Kalamazoo Payroll is owned by Dominion, the plot deepens. They were not corrupting the election, they were messing with the vaccine trackers. [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 12:31, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

"*refresh* Aww, still in Kalamazoo, *refresh* Yay, 'A connection could no..' .. oh." [[User:Ocæon|ocæon]] ([[User talk:Ocæon|talk]]) 13:25, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I knew my choice to live in Kalamazoo would be validated eventually. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.31|162.158.74.31]] 14:49, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I nearly put that Cueball should just get on with his attenuated life while he waits for the attenuated vaccine, but that only describes some of the possible candidates he could (eventually) be given, so isn't a brilliant pun... Also, I did computer training (Novell server administration, to be precise) at Kalamazoo, but I have no idea why they called the company that (no geographic connection, and the song lyrics I know from the Goon Show half-time version seem hardly linkable at all) and I think they went bust/changed name again not long after I 'graduated'. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.78|162.158.155.78]] 21:22, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

2347: Dependency

2020-08-22T11:33:31Z

162.158.155.78: Fix a serious issue that apparently historically developed: the first 80% do not touch the comic at all, so move them to the end in an “Background and Examples” section.

{{comic
| number = 2347
| date = August 17, 2020
| title = Dependency
| image = dependency.png
| titletext = Someday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we'll have a long period of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A PROJECT [[User:Dgbrt|SOME RANDOM PERSON]] HAS BEEN THANKLESSLY MAINTAINING SINCE 2013. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Technology architecture is often illustrated by a stack diagram [https://www.guru99.com/images/1/102219_1135_TCPIPvsOSIM1.png], in which higher levels of rectangles indicate components that are dependent on components in lower levels. This is analogous to a physical tower of blocks, in which higher blocks rest on lower blocks. The stack in this cartoon bears a striking resemblance to a physical block tower, suggesting the danger that the tower will lose its balance when a critical piece is removed. The concept of balance is not intended to be communicated by a stack diagram, making this a humorously absurd extension of a well-known diagram style.

{{w|ImageMagick}}, mentioned in the title text, is a popular, standalone utility released in 1990 that is used for performing transformations between various graphics file formats, and various other transformations. While there are also numerous libraries and API's for performing these tasks within larger programs, ImageMagick is so popular and easy to use that many programs use its API or just find it easier to {{w|Shell (computing)#Other uses|shell out}} to ImageMagick to perform a necessary transformation. They therefore {{w|Dependency hell|depend}} on ImageMagick, and would break if ImageMagick were to disappear.

===Background and Examples===
Taking code re-usability and modularization to its logical extreme has been a long-time tenet for programmers; programming began as a slow task on very memory-constrained systems, utilizing punch cards and days of delay waiting to discover a bug, such that reuse made things possible that otherwise wouldn't be. Once systems became small, fast, and able to hold a lot of data, the ability to provide higher and higher degrees of automation made reusable libraries a huge engine behind the development of technology. By outsourcing what would seem like basic functions, such as string manipulation, to other libraries, developers waste less time reinventing the wheel, so the philosophy goes, and thus many tiny packages, many of which contained only one function, became popular dependencies. This was especially true in Unix and Linux, where an entire program is commonly used for one small task, and programs exist to tie others together into powerful shell scripts.

Node.js (a breed of JavaScript) and Python are two modern ecosystems providing huge stashes of centralized libraries where developers of the world can come together to stand on the shoulders of all the small useful libraries they make for each other, to make new ones that are more and more powerful, and also more and more prone to sudden new unexpected bugs somewhere in the dependency chain. JavaScript was designed to be an easy to use front end scripting language, not a basic and core backend language as users of node.js's {{w|npm (software)|NPM}} package manager have made it be. While in theory, such a system may sound good for developers who would need to write and maintain fewer lines of code, systems which are highly optimized are also highly susceptible to rapid changes. For example, the famous left-pad incident in the NPM package manager left many major and minor web services which depended on it unable to build. A disgruntled developer unpublishing 11 lines of code was able to break everybody's build, because everyone was using it. [https://www.theregister.com/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/]

In 2014, the {{w|Heartbleed|Heartbleed bug}} revealed a significant portion of the internet was vulnerable to attack due to a bug in OpenSSL, a free and open-source library facilitating secure communication. One headline at the time demonstrated this comic in real life: "The Internet is Being Protected by Two Guys Named Steve" [https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisstokelwalker/the-internet-is-being-protected-by-two-guys-named-st]. The aforementioned Steves were overworked, underfunded, and largely unknown volunteers whose efforts nevertheless underpinned the security of major websites throughout the world. Randall provided a concise, helpful explanation of the bug in [[1354: Heartbleed Explanation]].

The current model of libraries and open-source development (topics which Randall has addressed extensively in the past) relies heavily on the free and continued dedication of unpaid hobbyists. Though some major projects such as Linux may be able to garner enough attention to build an organization, many smaller projects, which are in turn reused by larger projects, may only be maintained by one person, either the founder or another who has taken the torch. Maintaining libraries requires both extensive knowledge of the library itself as well as any use cases and the broader community around it, which usually is suited for maintainers who have spent years at the task, and thus cannot be easily replaced. Thus, there are many abandoned projects on the internet as people move on to greener pastures. Far from the days of backwards compatibility, that's usually not a problem, unless a project happens to be far up the dependency chain, as illustrated, in which case there may be a crisis down the road for both the developers and the users down the chain.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[A tower of blocks is shown. The upper half consists of many tiny blocks balanced on top of one another to form smaller towers, labeled:]

All modern digital infrastructure

[The blocks rest on larger blocks lower down in the image, finally on a single large block. This is balanced on top of a set of blocks on the left, and on the right, a single tiny block placed on its side. This one is labeled:]

A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Programming]]

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2398: Vaccine Tracker

2347: Dependency