The Registry of Decay
Software Rot manifests in three distinct forms:
- Environment Rot: The OS updates, and the old application can no longer call the necessary system graphics (e.g., a 16-bit app on a 64-bit OS).
- Dependency Rot: A third-party library is updated or abandoned, breaking the chain of functions the software relies on.
- Dormant Rot: Code that is rarely executed (like a year-end report generator) contains bugs that are only discovered years later, when it is too late to fix them easily.
Field Notes
The "It Worked Yesterday" Fallacy: Users often assume that if they don't change anything, the computer remains static. This is false. A connected computer is a fluid ecosystem; updates to unrelated components (drivers, security patches) can interact invisibly to rot stable software.
Entropy Engines: Modern software development (Agile, CI/CD) accelerates rot by prioritizing constant updates. A static piece of software is an anomaly in a stream of constant change, and the stream eventually erodes the stone.