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A comment on Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies. Parent comment

Re:Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to softw... by kortilla on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @04:11PM (#34331564)
It felt like “bit rot” to you because that’s how you defined “rot”, but it’s not how real rot works, which has nothing to do with changing.

It’s something that just breaks down without any changes in use case. If a wooden bridge rots away, nobody means that they were unable to add extra lanes. They mean it ceased to do what it previously did.

“Code calcification” is likely a better approximation of what you’re trying to convey.

“Bit rot” would be better fitting to actual storage loss, but this industry chose poorly.

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Re:Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to softw... by capitalsigma on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @10:09PM (#34334594)
It's supposed to be a joke, comparing the process of drift in the codebase with physical disintegration. Much like technical debt is not literally a balance owed to another party, or an object is not literally a physical lump of mass, and a class doesn't have a literal parent because it was never born.
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