"We are no longer particularly in the business of writing software to perform specific tasks. We now teach the software how to learn, and in the primary bonding process it molds itself around the task to be performed. The feedback loop never really ends, so a tenth year polysentience can be a priceless jewel or a psychotic wreck, but it is the primary bonding process--the childhood, if you will--that has the most far-reaching repercussions."
Yes, can’t remember the name, but there’s an old short story about alien explorers who find a dead Earth with futuristic buildings.
They revive a knight who attacks them and gets killed, a hippie who they kill off after questioning, and finally a future human with psychic powers who steals the revival device.
If you’re willing to pay for proprietary software, I’ve been incredibly happy with Roon for music organization. Handles 99% of albums I add without an issue, great multi-room support, best suggestions of any existing service (Rest in peace Google Play Music). They added remote streaming a few years ago and it’s all I use now.
Other fallen status symbols that come to mind, although lower costs were the reason over better alternatives.
Aluminum before better material science dropped the price. Dishes, utensils, the cap on the Washington Monument.
Pineapples before Dole setup plantations.
Gelatin had two phases: before refrigeration, it needed hours of work in the kitchen. Then the status came from electrification and owning a refrigerator.
> I've resorted to making an "actual_requirements.txt" file manually listing only direct dependencies and whatever version constraints make sense.
Pip-tools has an elegant solution for this. You write an requirements.in where you list packages and optionally versions, then pip-compile turns that into a requirements.txt with every package including dependencies specified by versions. You can use it to update specific packages as well.
Python Foundation support ended that long ago, but vendors maintained it for longer. Red Hat support for it through RHEL 7 ends 30 June 2024, however, and my guess is they’re the last ones.
To be fair, I had stretches of 2K, XP, 7 and 10 working acceptably.