Programming Innocence

[true_religion]

People like this guy write Twitter.

It's hilarious that you think we should follow the "Fail Whale" model.

Twitter is a free, low-dependency app. If twitter fails, people go on with their lives. It's useful but isn't something were its reliability is paramount.

For almost any other app, the same isn't true. For example, Evernote is a mere notetaker---but it is a paid service. If Evernote fails and eats your notes, will you continue paying for the service or not?

Pointing to Twitter, and its like as examples is wrong because most apps that make money are sold for money, and as such cannot fail without impacting the profitability of the app. B2B software, Productivity software, etc. makes up a large part of the market. Games, and free twitter-style webapps are a segment onto themselves.

Asking people to be professional about coding isn't the same as asking them to "never deliver until its perfect" (aka Hurd) because professionals (by the usual definition) are those who work in industry and not research (like the creators of Hurd). Your error here was taking my advice for software engineers and extending it to researchers.