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Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

There are very few non-trivial projects that are truly "finished" in the sense of "will never need any changes". There's always bugs, there's always a changing ecosystem (even for C), and for many projects once in a while you do want some new features.

For example a new feature added last month is the new pcre2_set_max_pattern_compiled_length() function, to limit the size of compiled patterns. I assume that wasn't added for the craic but in response to a real-world use case. There are also plenty of bugfixes and smaller changes.

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"finished" as in "totally free from bugs" is one thing, "finished" as in "feature complete and passes all known test cases, artificial and real world, known at the time" is another. As an industry we need to push the second notion as something someone can build and then set down. building a bridge instead of a steam engine locomotive. a bridge needs some maintenance and upkeep, yes, but after it's built, the team that built it moves on to another project. To contrast, a steam engine locomotor is an ongoing engineering project, which requires constant upkeep to keep the train moving. A SaaS company's backend is a steam engine. The Unix util "ls" is a bridge.

I think that's a poor example because bridges wear out and need to be maintained. There are a number of Youtubers devoted to disasters (One is "Plainly Difficult") and bridge failures are a large component of their examples.

I don't see how that undermines my point. Everything needs maintenance and upkeep. You have to re-paint the bridge and check it for cracks and do testing on it. But that's measured in days/weeks/months/years vs. a steam engine going off the rails in seconds/minutes/hours.

In my comment I stated:

> a bridge needs some maintenance and upkeep, yes,

Is there a way I could have stated that to emphasize that bridges will fail if they're not maintained?

If you read my second sentence above, I think we're in almost perfect agreement. Unless I'm misunderstanding you? My definition of "finished" includes provisions for bug fixes and important features.

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