This is like asking why does entropy exist. Because that's the way it works. Add economic incentives that don't correlate with maintaining quality and that pattern is accelerated. Look at healthcare in the States for an example. Or Apple software quality for shining examples of expansive software efforts. I've sat having a beer with folks working on major projects we use every day and when I mention their product has a problem they defend it--really couldn't care less about the truth or their customer. Or maybe I'm just missing something. Silicon Valley is a brand. And software development is an arts and crafts effort--not engineering. This is a generalized comment.
Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
131–140 of 166 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#132Given enough time and resources the engineers will problem solve the quality issues. It's just under capitalism there's no incentive, this has been pretty clear to me since I first entered the industry.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#133[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#134I 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…
Most of the "client"/desktop software does the same things that it did in 1997. Most/all of the 'advanced' features such as AI/voice recognition are done server-side because reasons. If the quality of desktop software was going up, it would be doing more than it did in 1997. I don't think it does, in fact it is being dumbed down to look like mobile software (which is inherently lower quality due to limited UI). So ho…
Do you think web development is anywhere near what it was 20 years ago? Or even 10 years ago? It has definitely advanced a lot. We're now able to do things we were never able to do back then. Now the browser can run a whole cad application, Photoshop, advanced 3d games and complex UI that we weren't able to compose before.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#135Its 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.
And don't think you absolutely can't reverse entropy. You need to apply eork to the system, but ig you think about it the process of life itself is kinda doing that from an ever more entropic environment.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#136I agree that it’s a business problem. Cost, prioritization, rapid hiring, promotion incentives all play a part. Nobody usually funds a project to go through and clean up code. My last two jobs before I went fully down the management track, I deleted 100k-200k lines of code by applying static analysis, deleting obviously dead code, finding obviously broken code and figuring out whether it was being used (thankfully it…
Yeah so Don Knuth says if you want a measure of productivity add the amount of code that's written to the amount of code that's deleted. In the same vein, make one to throw away. Final concept from Knuth: 1 in 50 people have the "computer scientist's mindset".
This is probably not what he had in mind, but I love make one to throw away, for experiments. Product and VPs often have a damn hard time wrapping their minds around it though. I saw it working with my own eyes! What do you mean we can’t ship it?! My latest product partners have no trouble understanding the value when they see that their experiments get shipped in half the time, it’s well worth it to get twice as many experiments out even if GA takes twice as long, because 2/3rds of experiments should fail anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding games, I wonder if it is just an issue of expectations. For the longest time, AAA studios mostly released simple first person shooters with straightforward enemy AI and simple physics. And Bethesda and Obsidian released gloriously buggy RPGs. Nowadays, every game includes open world elements, RPG elements, and more complicated NPC interactions... and it turns out that they are all full of bugs. Complex game…
> Complex games have complex problems that don't reveal themselves until players do weird things. If you don't think them through they will. Just write it right.
I mean, I don't work in games, this is just an observation as a player who's bumped into his fair share of bugs. But if I bump into Bethesda I'll mention that advice to them.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#138What counts as decreasing quality?
When I started playing with computers an error often meant a hard crash of the whole system.
Now an app dies (rare) and I just restart it and often it comes back up just where I left it.
That’s a very specific example but I certainly prefer it to the past.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#139I think you almost got the answer to your own question. For me, quality software is made by very small teams of very competent people improving the software for a long time. We don't know much about the vast amount of closed software, but, for opensource, the state-of-the-art follow these rules.
Re: Ask HN: Why is software quality always decreasing?
#140newer tech allows lower skilled developers to build programs. Which in turn leads to more tech to dumb things down even more. Resulting in more inefficient programs overtime.