I basically agree. The big problem is what the author talks about the end, which is essentially people releasing software without taking a deep breath and going "Am I prepared to support this forever?" Instead there is a constant rush to push out the next thing regardless of whether it disrupts the last thing.
I also think there are some variations on this depending on whether we're talking about a user-facing application or a library. For applications I think it's really important to not break people's workflows, and yet apps these days do it all the time. Firefox loves to change random stuff about the look and feel. Various programs will get a "fresh redesign" that adds little. The article talks a lot about "new features", but to me the issue isn't the addition of new features but changes to the ways old features can be used.
> use stable and minimalistic packages where needed, much like Windows does instead of Linux
I agree with this in particular. I mean, I'm not sure if it's "stable and minimalistic", but it's basically "make everything route through one pathway and maintain backwards compatibility on that at all costs". Until Windows 10, Microsoft essentially maintained this philosophy, and I loved it. I could use Windows 7 in almost exactly the same way that, 25 years ago, I used Windows 95. I could turn off automatic updates and do them occasionally when I wanted to, and when I had time to google and check that none of them was going to screw anything up, and I could disable ones that would screw something up. It seems like with Win10, though, Microsoft gave up and decided to adopt the approach of "you will be forced to upgrade at a certain time".
So I switched to Linux, which has its own set of problems. The big one being that everything is installed based on a complex dependency tree instead of the Windows approach of "every program dumps everything it needs in its own directory". The Windows approach is inefficient but thereby much more robust, since it means programs rely on upgrading various shared libraries much less than they do on Linux. The trend towards Flatpak-type stuff on Linux is promising, although it still seems like it hasn't been adopted as the mainstream.
Just two days ago I took the plunge to update Kubuntu. It seems to have worked, but it did force some changes in other software I use, and it's always a mentally taxing experience for me because of the likelihood of something going totally haywire.
I also think there are some variations on this depending on whether we're talking about a user-facing application or a library. For applications I think it's really important to not break people's workflows, and yet apps these days do it all the time. Firefox loves to change random stuff about the look and feel. Various programs will get a "fresh redesign" that adds little. The article talks a lot about "new features", but to me the issue isn't the addition of new features but changes to the ways old features can be used.
> use stable and minimalistic packages where needed, much like Windows does instead of Linux
I agree with this in particular. I mean, I'm not sure if it's "stable and minimalistic", but it's basically "make everything route through one pathway and maintain backwards compatibility on that at all costs". Until Windows 10, Microsoft essentially maintained this philosophy, and I loved it. I could use Windows 7 in almost exactly the same way that, 25 years ago, I used Windows 95. I could turn off automatic updates and do them occasionally when I wanted to, and when I had time to google and check that none of them was going to screw anything up, and I could disable ones that would screw something up. It seems like with Win10, though, Microsoft gave up and decided to adopt the approach of "you will be forced to upgrade at a certain time".
So I switched to Linux, which has its own set of problems. The big one being that everything is installed based on a complex dependency tree instead of the Windows approach of "every program dumps everything it needs in its own directory". The Windows approach is inefficient but thereby much more robust, since it means programs rely on upgrading various shared libraries much less than they do on Linux. The trend towards Flatpak-type stuff on Linux is promising, although it still seems like it hasn't been adopted as the mainstream.
Just two days ago I took the plunge to update Kubuntu. It seems to have worked, but it did force some changes in other software I use, and it's always a mentally taxing experience for me because of the likelihood of something going totally haywire.