Is this incident not reason enough? Astronauts in space are needing remote support to debug it, and taking up priceless mission time.

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hatthew 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, but bespoke software isn't necessarily going to be more reliable.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

> The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed.

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fc417fc802 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Alpine and mutt are about as far from bespoke as it gets. Both are far less likely to suffer from bugs than outlook.

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applfanboysbgon 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This quote is completely and totally irrelevant. Nobody is saying they should code a new Outlook. If they did code something, it would be significantly smaller in scope and rigorously tested like spacebound programs in the past were. "New space-engineering-grade code created with actual engineering practices" is absolutely going to be more reliable than "old bloated commercial shitware". But I guess software engineering is a lost art, so it can't be helped.

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HeyLaughingBoy 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's also going to take a hell of a lot longer and cost more than buying an Outlook license. If I was lead on that project, you'd have an uphill battle trying to convince me that spending $100k+ on an email solution unless you can point to specific, serious deficiencies in the existing off the shelf solutions.

Software Engineering is far from a lost art: part of the practice is intelligently making cost-benefit decisions.

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applfanboysbgon 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The current solution is literally causing problems in space. Space-grade engineering is expensive, but having things go wrong on your already very expensive mission is even more expensive.

	▲	dotancohen 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Until we've had this failure, I do agree that using COTS software was the logical choice. And now we know better.

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SamBam 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Alpine and Mutt are about 20 and 30 years old, respectively.

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HeyLaughingBoy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And that problem would go away with a 30 year-old solution?

	▲	fc417fc802 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That problem would be much less likely with a minimalist battle tested OSS solution whose maintainers and users have decidedly different priorities than those governing something like outlook or even thunderbird. The higher the stakes the more valuable minimalism becomes.