I can vouch for (1) being correct since I am managing an HPC Cluster for a company right now. The way to to is modules.sf.net (or the newer and nicer Lmod which is Lua).
The usual need is for a multitude of versions being avaible and easily usable. This starts at the compiler level and goes up to stuff like I have 5 versions of Tool X. This needs Python 2.7.3 (yes exactly that version). Now make it easy for me to use it.
It has been my only touching point with TCL so far -- I. Don't. Like. It.
What I don't get is the mindset that refactoring is optional.
If I'd be the customer and people came to me to tell me "Of course we can do feature X but we also LIKE to do Y" what I hear is "We can do what you want for amount EUR x but we'd like to sell you something that costs EUR x+k".
So I'm not talking about the customer believing it's optional, I'm talking about the development teams themselves believing it's optional.
I't would sound a whole lot different to state "Sure we can do X. It's EUR x. This is what is necessary..." (the list of work packages would include refactoring, maybe worded in a way that is better understandable by my customers).
I'm going to spare you the the usual comparison to car makers or whatnot. I think the mistake is with ourselves to simply state that it is necessary and not optional to maintain quality. After all if you can take the risk of implementing features without maintaining a quality product isn't -- and thus loosing customers as implementing features only when maintaining quality -- and thus loosing customers to competitors who are willing to reduce quality for the other risk, and a possibly lower price for a single project or two?
> "We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns" is a laughable statement to have issued.
Why o why does "investigated this technology" even imply that somebody (technical) looked at it?
Lead: Hey vendor, is your product secure?
Vendor: Sure it is. It helps people find products they want.
Lead: Aye! That's cool. Deal!
Vendor: Aye! Let's hand it off to the mere mortals to implement the plan...
Customer (formerly known as lead): Nice doing business with you. I like we have a relationship based on trust and honesty.
Here's a question: If some VPNs are blocked and others aren't maybe they are just blocking stuff that they can't control?
In other words: The services that are good enough to prevent eavesdropping are blocked, while the other services are "clear text" to the attacking party. Is that a possibility?
> This is mostly a sysadmin/devops issue, since all languages have the same issue.
You're kidding right? I thought that whole "devops" movement (call it what you like) was to get rid of the attitude of "other people's problem".
I live in environments that are (for the most part) regulated and demand by law that there is a strict separation between the people running and developing software, often open to interpretation is the 3rd role of people configuring the software.
The problem is that "I solve it..." just doesn't work. Either people solve it by working cooperatively together or it simply won't ever be deployed.
There's no such thing as a sysadmin problem, devops problem, developer problem. (No go downvote me for the tone of the next sentence) -- For me it's either get your ass moving, stand up, walk over to people and talk to them or get lost!
I missed this at the time, but I think you read past what I said: I used "devops" in the tools sense, not the people sense. A programming language (the syntax, the compiler, the linter) can't be everything to everyone, and therefore most don't attempt to shoehorn in things like static asset bundling, etc.
That's why frameworks exist, or packages like go-bindata or rakyll/statik (https://github.com/rakyll/statik), or CM tools that can wrap it all together.
Spain (I know this from a Friend): Pretty harsh regulations, no Uber at all.