US Politics as a Git Workflow: A Rewrite or a Revert?

Description

A screenshot of a Twitter exchange from January 20, 2021, the day of the US Presidential Inauguration. The first tweet is from the popular developer humor account 'I Am Devloper' (@iamdevloper). It reads, 'Today, America's going through what we in the software biz know as “maybe a rewrite will save the project”'. Below this, a user named susanjstahl replies, 'Nah, more like a revert to previous stable state'. The humor stems from applying high-stakes software development metaphors to a major political event. The initial tweet sarcastically frames the change in administration as a desperate, often-doomed 'rewrite' of a failing project. The reply offers a more pointed and arguably more technically apt analogy: a 'revert,' suggesting the previous four years were a disastrous feature branch and the country is simply rolling back to the last known-good configuration. This resonates with senior engineers who understand the immense risk of a rewrite versus the relative safety of a revert

Common Tags

DeveloperHumor RefactoringNeeded RefactoringPain VersionControl TechnicalDebt Git

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick It wasn't a clean revert. They had to use `--force` and now half the config files are missing and no one remembers what the environment variables were

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

It wasn't a clean revert. They had to use `--force` and now half the config files are missing and no one remembers what the environment variables were
Anonymous

“Go ahead, call it a rewrite if you want - but recompiling a 50-state monolith that’s been in prod since 1776 feels more like praying Maven finds a legacy JAR that isn’t even on the mirror anymore.”
Anonymous

After 20 years in tech, you realize every 'revolutionary rewrite' eventually becomes someone else's legacy system to revert - whether it's your microservices architecture or your democracy
Anonymous

The eternal engineering debate: 'This time the rewrite will be different!' versus 'git revert HEAD~4years && git push --force'. Spoiler: reverting to the last known stable state usually has fewer merge conflicts and doesn't require explaining to stakeholders why the new architecture will definitely solve all problems this time, promise
Anonymous

If “rewrite” appears in the incident runbook, you don’t have a runbook - you have a manifesto; ship the revert, then refactor when the pager stops screaming
Anonymous

Nothing says senior engineer like choosing git revert over a fantasy rewrite; one restores service, the other restores your backlog
Anonymous

If only nations had Git: 'git revert authoritarianism' instead of endless rewrites that ship the same tech debt
@chupasaurus 5y

But there is no backups since no one thought about them initially.
Deleted Account 5y

Pretty funny to live in a former Soviet Union and see, how Americans trying to play in socialism and marxsism, thinking they will not fail. Well, kids, you can try. You already lost your freedom of speech, what next? Will see!
1. @qwnick 5y
  
  So true
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  …I don't think socialism is inherently bad. It's just that governments tend to corrupt more, the more power they have. I'm not too familiar with the specifics of marxism so I can't say anything about that.
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  WTF BROTHER 🤬🤬🤬🤬🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇸🇺🇲🇺🇸🇺🇸
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Lol, more socialism = more corruption. Cause you put more money in government, so it has more power and steal more money. And leftist already get rid of freedom of speech and want to get rid of guns, so people cant fight corruption.
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  I think @RiedleroD was quite correct with his statement. More power = bigger potential for corruption
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  How would you make socialism without rising taxes?
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  That's quite funny topic. What about no taxes at all?
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  And how you will redistribute income without taxes?
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  If there is no personal property, there is no need to seize anything from workers. Everything is owned by gov. That's basically slavery. Who will put taxes on slaves?
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  right? instead in the USA rn everything is owned by companies that pay you minimum wage. much better.
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  So this is how you want i to be? Cause otherwise you prove my point
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Bruh, that's named perfect communism. Socialism is a transition point to communism
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  False, there is no government during final communism AND armed militia. Armed people without government cant be slaves
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Anyway communism suck and never work
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  true but the same goes for true capitalism
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Well, it best we have, all alternatives failed
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  But there much more to try in our century!
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Tbh, this looks somehow imminent
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Like what?
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  the alternative would be balance. As I said, here in austria, we have a mix of socialism and capitalism, and it works well! In fact, most of europe is built on top of a very similar idea of balance.
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Socialism in not contrary to capitalism, lol
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  that's not what I said either
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Well, you lost freedom of speech and guns too, nice balance, slaves)
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Not sure that in Europe we could talk about lost freedom of speech at that point
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  what? I can say literally anything except denying the holocaust without getting problems and you call that "losing freedom of speech"? right.
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  and I'd rather have a lack of gun if I also have a lack of people that want to shoot me in my country.
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  People who want to shoot you, will get guns anyway lol, cause that illegal, lol. What will you do if they buy black guns?
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  uh we don't have that problem here. First, we have a way smaller wage gap, which makes people more content and less likely to want to murder you, and honestly, most people just try the thing with knifes.
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Ahahaha, we have a proverb. come with a knife to a shootout
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  there is no shootout here my friend
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Melbourne nightclub shooting, Darwin shooting, Melbourne triple shooting, that massacres all from 2019 1) it makes your statement false. 2) where these people get their guns, lol?) 3) why low wage gap didnt protect them from bullets?
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  australia!=austria dumbass
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Its all the same left shit
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  it's very much not
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  How is that?
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Be a man, you confused countries
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  I am, true
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  …nah
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Just admit your mistake and let's move on
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  I admit
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  yeah, my fault, sorry, was thinking about Australia all the time, my statement about freedom of speech is false about Austria, im sorry. I have sister in Austria, beautiful country, how about Vienna attack, she was pretty frightened.
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  right, that's true. that was executed & organized by a pretty well-known guy. Well-known in the german defense ministry at least. They kinda feared to be accused of racism if they arrested him before he did the crime. He got the weapons by smuggling them from western asia into europe afaik. But I think it's kinda telling that the whole country is shaken once a shooting takes place. I think 2 people died? Not really that bad if we compare it to the USA.
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  7, including policeman
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  a single one? or several policemen?
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  afaik 1
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Wow, that's quite popular across ex-USSR too!
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  And get in your family house? Call to police?))
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Just quickly google how to get firearms license
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  😂👌
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  uh we lock our doors. And yes, we do have a functional police.
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  The point is not about comunism, but there is no gov who will "just" resign
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  So your point that socialism suck with or without taxes? I agree with this statement
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  My point in overall that both of them is dead end (in their traditional interpretation). At the same time, we have China, who started as socialism, but more like Government Capitalism right now (with goal to achieve communism at some point... 😄 )
  
  @qwnick 5y
  
  Yeah, they going full singapore now, not quite communism, lol
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  that's the problem - your current gov. likes to tax the average people while billionaires pay close to nothing. The point is not to increase wealth by reducing taxes but to decrease uhh non-wealth (english knowledge lacking, sorry) by taking the most from the rich & using it for idk building proper roads and a healthcare system.
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  more socialism!=more corruption by itself. Here in austria, we're actually quite socialist, but despite that, we also still have most of the freedoms you guys have. The point of getting rid of guns is to prevent people from killing each other, has worked wonderfully in austria for over 100 years. I haven't heard of a single school schooting here… ever.
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Ahem, when saying "we also still have most of the freedoms you guys have.": With who exactly you do compare?
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  USA in this case
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Honestly, I'm quite curious, which freedom rights (from you PoV) USA citizens have while Austrian citizens doesn't?
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  right to have a gun
  
  @slnt_opp 5y
  
  Exactly that's why socialism it's bad and never last long
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  dude read the rest of the conversation before starting a war again
  
  @slnt_opp 5y
  
  Argh, you missed the topic and switched to gun laws Schade
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  I didn't miss the topic, I was finished with it. As was everybody else in the conversation afaik
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  meaning we all agreed that balance is the thing
  
  @theodolu 5y
  
  That'a why it is bad lol.
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  capitalism is also 'bad' since the more wealthy companies are, the more corruption they can inflict on the gov.
  
  @theodolu 5y
  
  In capitalism the government at least can't fire you or send you to desert to die
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  true, in capitalism, the company you work at can fire you or send you to desert to die. actually, the gov can definitely still do that in both systems.
@qwnick 5y

Cant even tell if governemnt told you to shut up
@RiedleroD 5y

not comparing russia to austria, but usa to austria here, but that's a valid argument here. We have a lot less people to control the area too though, so that's my counterargument.
@RiedleroD 5y

we do actually
@Magilarp 5y

It should have never been written in the first place. The ideation and implementation of the process competition system, where the most "efficient" processes are assigned disproportionately more cpu time than the less efficient ones has been a disaster for their users
@Agent1378 5y

"Normal" socialism requires obligatory working, you can not just do nothing and sit on welfare without reason, we had that in USSR - prison term (weeks/months) for tuneyadstvo. And yet it all still failed, modern takes on the subject don't even have this.

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US Politics as a Git Workflow: A Rewrite or a Revert?

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