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   lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 02:13:53 JST lenazun

   I think some tech companies are large enough to have a product archeologist. someone who can date and catalog where features and artifacts came from, what was their purpose, what got discarded along the way, how did humans shape the product into its current form.

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     Eaton (eaton@phire.place)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 02:13:53 JST Eaton

     in reply to

     @lzg The concept of a software archaeologist ripples around in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep / Deepness In The Sky. Generations-old systems layered atop each other that work, but require specialists who can dig through sedimentary layers of architecture and history when new needs arise…

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     lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 07:17:39 JST lenazun

     in reply to

     also I want to say that a corp archivist and a corp archeologist are friends and have coffee all the time and have adjacent offices and water each other's plants, but they have very different jobs.

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     lenazun (lzg@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 07:17:40 JST lenazun

     in reply to

     I love how many engineers imagine this as a data visualization tool. no sweetness, this is a human history. it will have stories, it will have tears, it will find no satisfying explanations. it will find jealousy and pain and love and desperation and joy. only about 5% will be seen in code or data or documentation or anything remotely hardware-like. it will be discarded in the first possible budget cut.

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     Eaton (eaton@phire.place)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 09:06:41 JST Eaton

     in reply to

     • Jack Jackson

     @scubbo it's definitely a much bigger part of the sequel, or at least that work is much more important to the central character's story. Things like the strategic importance of having unearthed admin backdoors to internal utilities are critical, etc.

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     Jack Jackson (scubbo@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 09:06:42 JST Jack Jackson

     in reply to

     • Eaton

     @eaton I've heard this claimed repeatedly, and it intrigued me so much that I read the first book almost-entirely off the back of that claim.

     So far as I could tell, it was mentioned once, in passing, in the prologue? I expected it to be a *way* more central concept given how much people talk it up. Is it more relevant in the sequel?

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     Eaton (eaton@phire.place)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 09:08:19 JST Eaton

     in reply to

     • Jack Jackson

     @scubbo Even in that book, though, the mechanics aren't as central as the idea of the thing — that time was invested and many years were spent developing the strategic advantage, and it's integrated enough in characters' stories that it feels earned, even if the grunt work of that type of archaeology generally happens off-screen, so to speak