Design bloggers are about to reinvent the concept of availability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...

Software standards are way too low these days. If you can't do at least 5 9s in everything you ship get out of the industry and humanity will be better off.

It reminds me of when people argued against covid restrictions saying that the virus had a 99% survival rate. A disease with a 1% infection fatality rate is a terrible disease!

Full disclosure: I also argued against covid restrictions, but not with this terrible argument.

"Truly robust engineering isn’t about what works for most; it’s about gracefully handling the edge cases"

Not really. Truly robust engineering includes a cost-benefit analysis of which edge cases you handle. We don't live in a world of unlimited time & money.

I mean 2% have their javascript turned off (either on purpose or caused by failing extensions). 5% are behind corporate proxies that block your domain. Are you going to host the site on substack also so those 5% can access it?

This is a basic ontological error, author conflates reliability and suitability

>> If a website uses fancy new browser features and works for 98% of the population

>> If an employer pays their employees 98% of the times, I definitely wouldn’t want to work there

Are you sure about that? 2% of the population has no bank account, will your employer agree to pay in cash?

These are different scenarios -> your employer likely cannot pay some percentage of the population; but that’s not the same as the process randomly failing (which may be worse or better depending in some cases)

I had this argument with people working on VR headsets, where a physical parameter was designed to cover the 5th to 95th percentile. I had to point out that flat-out excluding 10% of the population is a pretty crappy starting point...

Off topic (and at risk of being downvoted), I don't think I'll ever get a better chance to insist here that

"99 and a half won't do"

https://youtu.be/1QVJCjbgM-s

Holy Disciples

Trying to Make a Hundred

Or, phrased another way: there's a reason why we consider basic availability in nines and 2 nines is still considered pretty bad. 99% uptime means being down over 7 hours each month.

When I read the title, I instantly thought about these crappy Ai api status pages. People somehow are forced to accept that 98% uptime is alright.

Venues did kick out a lot more than 2% of their existing customers until they upgraded their bloodstream. Website visitors can upgrade their browser.