Ask HN: can software be made "anti-fragile" (aka "better than just robust")?

7 points

13 years ago

Software ages too fast for my liking! After a few years in this game, every time a "substantial" idea gets me excited, my brain wanders quickly to this thought: "yeah, let's roll down this rabbit hole again. Spend over a year on something that soon won't matter, be outdated or erode into plain non-functioning state in around or under 5 years".

The tech world moves so fast, all we indie devs or "small teams" can reasonably attack are "toyish gigs". "Side projects." Hackathons, 24-hour/weekend projects... isitsunnyin.com/location etc. Or, participate early (as freelancers or contributors) in a new wave that may at least "sustain" us for perhaps a decade before expiry. 10 years ago .NET or PHP, 5 years ago mobile, today "big data" or Go. Well that's not too shabby... BUT -- I'm still wondering about this and I'm about to dive into this read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile:_Things_That_Gain_from_Disorder

"Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better."

Just wondering if anyone ever developed some more in-depth thoughts of the possibilities of "anti-fragility by design" in the tech world (specifically software). Not as in "software that lasts a lifetime" (COBOL mainframes anyone?) but building stuff that somehow "gets better".

Anyway, I'm off to some studying, looking forward to any insights from the fine crowds in this arena..