[janderson215]

I do not disregard it, but I have no idea what to do about it and it gives me an existential concern about the future of the world with which I am familiar (America? The West?). I don’t think it is a healthy society if the people responsible for systems (critical, luxury, or otherwise) do not care about succession or improvement of the systems they build or maintain. Best case scenario, the problem the systems solve fail and someone else sees value in solving the problem, so they solve it again and re-discover the “why”. My guess is that the longer it takes for the failures to happen, the longer it will take to re-learn the “why”.

I don’t like that people just work for a paycheck. I understand why and it’s very hard to argue against people doing it and not caring when their managers or the companies they work for don’t care about them in return. The Cambrian Explosion of solved problems will lead to an deluge of catastrophes when a large percentage of those systems fail unless people take care to transmit the “why” to the future stewards of these systems.

[Grimblewald]

That's a great point. I can be less diligant in my documentation than i'd like to be at times. This means somethimes the "why" of something isnt discussed. I need to stop doing that and find a way to add all the "whys" without overwhelming readers who just want answers. Maybe footnotes or appendicies.

[janderson215]

While I appreciate the effort and strive to do so myself, I’m not sure this is entirely a matter of you trying harder/doing better. You can often explain the context well enough to a degree that is practical enough to solve the narrow case, but communication is lossy by nature, so descriptions of systems become impoverished. It is so hard not to make bad assumptions about the reader, especially if you look forward even 1 or 2 generations from now. It seems this is a large part of the role of the US Supreme Court and I’m certain that is not perfect even with days of deliberation. For technically enforced systems with faster feedback loops, higher volumes, and lower tolerances, there are necessarily more errors.