On outdated infrastructure

I’ve been thinking about infrastructure. Not so much physical roads and buildings, but rather what keeps websites and online services running.

There are always lots of complaints when Google (or any other company) makes significant changes to their sites and services. People want to know why they can’t keep running the old version along with the new version? And even if they wanted to do that, often it’s not possible. Because of changes in the underlying infrastructure. 

Google has been pretty open of late about these technical changes, if you know where to look for the information. For example, YouTube’s Creator Studio Classic was written in the Python 2 programming language (hat tip Eric Parker), which was sunsetted on January 1, 2020. Over the years the code base became complicated and unwieldy, they decided to start fresh with the new YouTube Studio.

Blogger’s interface has also undergone a major transformation this year. While it has long needed an update, there was no way to delay the final migration to new Blogger, because  “the legacy interface runs on very old technical infrastructure that is about to be turned off”. That was back in August, and legacy Blogger is now no longer accessible.

As the internet ages, sites and services will eventually need an overhaul. And that includes my sites, and your site. Even if you (or your web host) keep your content management system up-to-date, widgets stop working, Adobe Flash Player will soon stop being supported, ad and affiliate codes need updating and broken links need to be replaced.

Which is a long way of saying I've got some work to do....

Photo by mhtoori .com from Pexels