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docs(faq): Reboot
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Hypfer committed Dec 24, 2023
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We thank you for your understanding and are looking forward to doing business with you!

## Why is there no reboot button in Valetudo? <a name="reboot"></a>

Because it would be harmful to have that.

You see, people in general are lazy.<br/>
The laziest of the lazy people then usually become programmers and the laziest of those then become the very good programmers.

This is because as a programmer, if you do it right, you only **once** have to teach a computer how to do something and after that it will just do its thing and you can return to doing nothing.
But you can only do nothing in peace if you can ensure that the computer will actually do its work correctly.

Because of that, you'll try your hardest to build bug-free software that just works because the last thing you want to do is actually work in front of a computer.

**This inherent drive to not work at all and especially not with computers is the feedback loop and incentive system that creates great software.**


So what happens if instead of spending 12h debugging some arcane network-related issue that deadlocks the system on each tuesday when there's a full moon, you could just add a nightly reboot?<br/>
You're a programmer. You're lazy. Which option do you pick?

Exactly. You do the auto-reboot thing, shrug, say "eh, good enough" to yourself and then return to not working.

But what else did you do?
- You accepted that the software can just be broken and with that you've lowered its standards. Significantly.
- You gave up on the opportunity to learn something. Something non-trivial even. Understanding of systems that would've likely improved your skills.
- You also misjudged, because the issue doesn't just affect tuesdays when there is a full moon. The underlying issue breaks half of the software. You just didn't notice yet.


Adding a reboot button is accepting mediocrity. It's accepting that you won't understand what is going on. You just decide to not bother.<br/>
And that can be a reasonable choice depending on your situation.

For example, if you're business, it might just make financial sense to just reboot instead of dumping a few hundred engineering hours into a rabbit hole.
"Good enough" is all you need to sell a product.

You might also just be some hacker that wanted to solve an issue in a "good enough" way. That's also fine.
You don't have to always go the extra mile. That doesn't scale. Good enough can be good enough.


With Valetudo however, I don't want the project to just be "good enough". I want it to be great - or at least strive towards being that.<br/>
Because of that, there can't be a reboot button, since as soon as there is one, things will just not get fixed, improved or even just reported anymore.


## Why is there no iOS companion app? <a name="ios"></a>

Because I don't want the app to be a paid yearly subscription supporting only some small garage startups in Cupertino
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