Hotspot Express (HSX)

[Hohensee, Paul]

Re JSX lack of adoption, the argument is that it's always taken at least a year to stabilize a new release, and with 6 months between releases none of the non-LTS releases will ever be stable. Doesn't matter whether that's true or not, it's what people believe based on previous experience with 8 and 11. The relatively large degree of incompatibility between 8 and 11 is another hurdle. People remember that and don't want to worry about language and library backward compatibility every 6 months, no matter how small those incompatibilities are. Doing a lot of backports is a response to that customer demand. Hotspot is "under the covers", so to speak, so HSX was easier to sell than is JSX.

Paul

On 2/19/20, 3:07 PM, "Claes Redestad" <claes.redestad at oracle.com> wrote:

    On 2020-02-19 22:50, Hohensee, Paul wrote:
    > Given your stance on backports and JSX adoption, I can see your point and even agree with it. The problem is that the vast majority of users don’t want to use JSX. That's definitely the case inside Amazon.
    
    And why is that, Paul?
    
    > 
    > HSX does complicate the code base a bit, but is that worse than doing 600+ backports and counting? 
    
    Yes. :-)
    
    Or rather: Even if a vast majority of users only skip from LTS to LTS, I
    believe only a small fraction of those backports have been *strictly
    necessary*.
    
    There are definitely resources that can be diverted from backporting
    (which helps users stuck on some old release) to maintaining and
    improving the tip (which brings *everyone* value sooner or later, be it
    next quarter or in three years).
    
    Granted, I've backported a few things that weren't strictly necessary,
    too, such as various startup optimizations, but always with the
    motivation that without a fix there would have been regressions caused
    by other, more critical changes. I'm not religiously against backports.
    :-)
    
    But even if you don't agree the virtues of focusing engineering
    resources on maintaining and working on the tip, we should stay well
    clear of things that make maintaining the tip harder than it already is.
    
    Because it is already really hard.
    
    And HSX is one of the worse things you can do to make that maintenance
    harder.
    
    > Also, I'm curious about how removing HSX remnants has improved performance. Can anyone point me at specifics?
    
    No. It's an accumulation of small improvements over time, including a
    reduction in static footprint, many small startup improvements and
    some overall performance improvements.
    
    But what's really at stake here are all the future features, cleanups
    and larger improvements that will be just that little bit *harder* to do
    *right* if hsx was still a thing.
    
    I won't go so far as to say it'd make any of the cool stuff happening at
    or near the tip now impossible. But it would without a doubt slow down
    progress to the detriment of everyone. Perhaps even enough to make some
    throw their hands in the air and pick up ranching. Just sayin'.
    
    /Claes