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Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#11

Post by phendrenad2 »

Software quality is suffering because we don't have software problems anymore. You can't make a new operating system, or make a new compiler, and make money. Those areas have been filled, and, software is evergreen so you can just port it to new hardware.

What we have are social problems, people problems, "disruption" to existing industries, etc. This is software "eating the world" (because it ran out of software problems to eat). This is why every startup pitch is "We're disrupting the commercial real estate loan industry" or "we're disrupting the mine subsidence claims industry". Just absolutely insane hail-mary startups trying desperately to find some niche that hasn't been invaded by software already.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#12

Post by smoldesu »

I think it's a matter of expectations. We assume that software can grow with infinite vertical complexity given enough time and effort, but simultaneously we make enormous efforts to dumb-down our interfaces and make things more user-friendly. You're not wrong if you think that old Unix machines were more versatile than a brand-new laptop, if not only because the command line forced you to think like a programmer to get stuff done.

Nowadays, people don't care. The 90s ruined us with it's impulse economy, society as a whole felt as though we were entitled to just the good parts and nothing more. As a result, software got developed that way. Fine Corinthian leather, Gaussian-frosted glass and lickable scrollbars won out against dependable, powerful software interfaces. Society doesn't want good software, they just want to feel good. People can leverage that desire to make a lot of money by selling mostly-satisfying software. Stay hungry, stay foolish?

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#14

Post by majkinetor »

Its always decreasing because entropy builds up on longer projects. Its simply the fact of life, not particularly specific to coding. Nothing to do about it. You can delay it somewhat but not too much.

The best you can do is to have automatic tests, lots of them, and make them work as intended (good tests are very hard to make). Those make refactoring possible and make specific quality guaranties.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#15

Post by timhrothgar »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #11

Software quality is suffering because we don't have software problems anymore. You can't make a new operating system, or make a new compiler, and make money. Those areas have been filled, and, software is evergreen so you can just port it to new hardware. What we have are social problems, people problems, "disruption" to existing industries, etc. This is software "eating the world" (because it ran out of software pro…

It would seem that this factor is important for understanding how we got here. If the hail-mary fails, nobody will notice. But sometimes it succeeds and when it does the engineers at said startup typically build upon a rotten core.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#16

Post by arnvald »

Besides the reasons mentioned by others, I want to add: discipline.

Keeping codebase well maintained requires some effort and often it's very tempting to cut a corner here or there, or to focus on adding new features instead of keeping dependencies up to date. Initially these shortcuts don't have a big impact, but at some point you notice it all became messy, and now it's hard to bring it back to shape.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#17

Post by pietromenna »

You already got the main reason in your text: " engineers compromising in the face of business pressure or engineers making mistakes due to lack of experience or foresight"

Those two factors are a reality now a days: people leave teams when they get experience and go to a place where they have 0 experience (knowledge is lot) and they built everything under pressure to deliver to meet market demands (so we rush to deliver features).

I would also tell you that in the past well organized projects were exception not the rule.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#18

Post by wrs »

timhrothgar wrote: post #5
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

I don’t really agree with your premise. Software quality wasn’t pristine a few decades ago. It wasn’t hard to find messy codebases, apps that barely worked, and developers who simply fumbled their way through code until something compiled. If anything, it feels like common softest quality has trended upwards as software engineering learning materials have become more widely and freely available across the internet an…

Perhaps I should update the question. I'm not referring to ALL software quality. I'm referring to the quality of codebases that are 1) old, 2) large, and 3) supported by many people. You make a good point though. Perhaps I just miss the good ol' days of working on small teams with small codebases that were pretty easily maintained.

Old large codebases are mostly maintained by people who weren’t around when the code was originally coming into existence. They don’t know the implicit design assumptions and decisions, or even the history of requirements. One thing you’ll find in nearly any software project of any age is a lack of good documentation of those things, so as you lose the community folklore, people will start making myopic changes, cargo-culting, violating future-looking design principles, and so forth. Pretty soon you just have a pile of incoherent features and making systematic improvements is hard because the code is no longer systematic.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#19

Post by spenczar5 »

I think there is a strong survivorship bias effect. One feature of good code is that it is easy to modify; bad code is impenetrable.

But this means bad code changes more rarely and more slowly, because it is hard. So the good code gets most of the modifications. Now, even if most of the time the modifications maintain quality, they certainly sometimes turn good code into bad code.

This is a system that gradually chews up your good code and turns it bad, until you have a big nasty mess you throw out, and start over again.

Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?

#20

Post by quanticle »

timhrothgar wrote: post #5
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

I don’t really agree with your premise. Software quality wasn’t pristine a few decades ago. It wasn’t hard to find messy codebases, apps that barely worked, and developers who simply fumbled their way through code until something compiled. If anything, it feels like common softest quality has trended upwards as software engineering learning materials have become more widely and freely available across the internet an…

Perhaps I should update the question. I'm not referring to ALL software quality. I'm referring to the quality of codebases that are 1) old, 2) large, and 3) supported by many people. You make a good point though. Perhaps I just miss the good ol' days of working on small teams with small codebases that were pretty easily maintained.

Even with those caveats, it's unclear whether the premise is satisfied. The Linux kernel is old (old enough to drink!) large (and getting larger!) and supported by many people. Has its quality declined? I don't think so. It supports more hardware than ever. Kernel panics don't happen nearly as often as they used to. New features (BPF), make kernel programming easier. It's difficult to say that the Linux kernel's quality has declined over time.
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