I guess this is applicable to any social media platform or other similar systems. Is it because there are always bugs to address, so it’s never really running smoothly, or other reasons?
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Because nothing ever stays the same and big pieces of software like Twitter are more like an ecosystem than a script. You’ve got your code and then you’ve got all the servers and other software that other people made that you depend on. It gets very complicated very quickly when you’re at massive scale.
Consistently over time things will change. The operating system will be updated, software you depend on will be updated, and yes you will find bugs in vulnerabilities in your own code. And you can’t just keep running the same version of Linux, for example, because there will be known vulnerabilities that you have to patch and then make sure your software can deal with that. If you don’t you’re going to get hacked. Combine that with being constantly under attack and you can be pretty sure that the software can’t just run forever how it is.
Incidentally this is why companies like Red hat are so fucking valuable. If you buy their product, you can keep running that same old version of Linux and all your other software for as long as you want and they’ll keep it patched. It’s going to cost you a ton of money though.
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