ross spencer :: exponentialdecay.digipres :: blog
Digital preservation analyst, researcher, and software developer
Just released on the No Time to Wait (NTTW) YouTube channel is my presentation from NTTW8 in Karlsruhe, Germany. (Slides also available here).
The presentation follows up on my proposal for iPRES 2024 and allowed me to present parts of what was, in the end, a pretty significant paper (in terms of word count).
Some of my reflections on the presentation are below.
So, it turns out my theme of the moment is code hygiene (or maybe memory?).
Today I am thinking about versioning, especially in relation to its impact on digital preservation; both software preservation and the impact of versions on long-term preservation efforts in other contexts.
It is very poetic to think about code as it containing the memory of its maintainers. I don’t entirely disagree with the idea, but it’s overly poetic and the reality of maintenance on systems that have become too unwieldy is anything but poetic.