[lambdaxymox]

For sure among the hardest problems in software engineering are versioning dependencies, and managing dependencies. At least those are the two I find the most aggravating. It seems like almost nobody can get it right even though component-based software engineering, SoA, etc. I think are generally extremely good ideas. The execution is pretty crummy pretty much everywhere.

With all that said, my sense is that hardware engineering has its own heap of Sisyphean problems and complexities. I definitely would not go back to working on hardware engineering problems like I did super early in my career (a mix of embedded firmware, device drivers, PCB design, and web development). I shudder at the thought of ever working with anything Verilog/VHDL, Xilinx, or SPICE ever again, or debugging PCB designs on the bench top in the lab with an oscilloscope and a logic probe. At least in school I ran more than a few bodge wires to patch a mistake in a PCB design iteration. Maybe in some sense, it's a blessing that those linear systems theory abstractions fall apart utterly in RF engineering problems, and one has to contend with the fact that all circuits radiate. At least circuits that still contain the magic smoke.

[Aerbil313]

I believe nix is the logical solution to dependency management and thus is the future of it.