So the Apple Developer portal continues to be down. The company has created a status page where we can check when the individual systems come back online.
I have a few issues with their strategy. It appears* that they’re rewriting the whole developer portal from scratch. Huh.
Let’s not mince words, here. Rewriting software is usually a terrible idea. It feels right, but rewriting projects nearly always go over budget and take longer than estimated.
What’s worse is that these developers rewriting the developer portal are working “around the clock.” Do you think the quality of code they’re writing is better than what it’s replacing? Do you think that the rewrite is going to be more secure or less secure than the old system? My money is on the new system having a few bugs of its own.
The real problem here is that Apple does what’s best for Apple first, customers second, and developers last. That means that the developer portal was allowed to rot into a state where it became a security liability for Apple. Then when the company discovered that liability, they did what’s best for them: they shut the whole thing down and did a rewrite. Awesome.