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Software disenchantment

tonsky.me

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Re: Software disenchantment

#21

Post by commandlinefan »

xg15 wrote: post #10
vbsteven wrote: post #7

I feel the same way as the author. I have a theory that we're not caring as much about performance and good software because we don't have to , because Moore's Law has led to machines that are fast enough to run our crappy and hastily written code with acceptable performance so the majority of users do not really care about it running more efficient. In the past, when computing resources were constrained we had to ca…

> I have a theory that we're not caring as much about performance and good software because we don't have to, because Moore's Law has led to machines that are fast enough to run our crappy and hastily written code with acceptable performance so the majority of users do not really care about it running more efficient. Depends what you define as "acceptable" and as "users caring". The bloat does have actual consequence…

I spend a significant portion of my work-week defending my employment - inputting time cards, updating JIRA tickets with "time spent", attending status meetings... all in the name of "efficiency". And on some level, I understand - nobody wants a Dilbert-esque Wally type wasting space. Yet the corporate attempts at maximum efficiency fail more horrifically than you would be able to imagine anything failing. Not only does the time spent proving that you weren't wasting time waste time itself, it's also so trivially gameable that the people who thrive are the ones who are MOST effective at being silently inefficient.

Re: Software disenchantment

#23

Post by mpolun »

Software hasn't been getting worse -- it always sucked. It used to be fast and small because there was no other option.

Also:

> @jckarter: A DOS program can be made to run unmodified on > pretty much any computer made since the 80s. A JavaScript > app might break with tomorrow’s Chrome update

LOL, DOS programs were crazy nonportable. They usually can only be run in VMs these days. Comparing it favorably to the most stable and portable API (the js ecosystem is another story, but the browser APIS are super-stable and never break) in the history of software is hilarious. I mean, all the flaws of DOS programs are totally reasonable given their constraints, but the comparison gets this totally backwards.

Re: Software disenchantment

#24

Post by oftenwrong »

alcio wrote: post #5

> Recently our industry’s lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence started really getting to me, to the point of me getting depressed by my own career and the IT in general. Loading this website resulted in 5.3MB being downloaded over 42 requests.

I block everything but HTML by default. One request, 10.49 KB transferred.

Re: Software disenchantment

#25

Post by tabtab »

I agree that something is out of whack. In-house plane-jane CRUD development used to be pretty simple and quick in the 90's. One could focus on the domain analysis side instead of micromanage tech. The IDE products had glitches, but got better every release, including deployment. The Web bleeped it all to heck and back, and nobody seems interested in promoting the standards to fix it. We toss in JavaScript gizmos to attempt to improve the UI to desktop standards, but these gizmos are clunky and browser-version-sensitive. Maybe the desktop era tools were artistically ugly, but much easier to develop and maintain. PHB's seem more swayed by UI eye-candy than practicality. It's great job security, but hugely wasteful. Our industry needs some deep soul-searching.

Re: Software disenchantment

#27

Post by metalrain »

almostarockstar wrote: post #9

It's an interesting game we are playing. Take websites as an example. We have to build websites using CSS and HTML and JS because that is what works in browsers. But browsers have to build DOMs, layout engines and JS engines this way because that's the way we write code. It's nobody's fault. It's evolution with a bad fitness function. We need a new start. A new paradigm.

In a sense AMP is the answer, produce less by having explicit limits while not throwing all tooling out. While AMP is somewhat more technically complex it's much simpler when you consider what it disallows.

However technology/solution is only tool, real problem is in the domain of users, how to make useful systems, how to make users care, technology is irrelevant for most of us.

Re: Software disenchantment

#28

Post by gpsx »

Software is hard. I blame it in Moore's law, in the sense that computers have gotten more capable but we programmers have not. Its like the brain can only hold so much before it gets overrun, and we reached that point several years ago. Working with large programs is very difficult, even for the best architected ones. And of course we can't expect all software to be the best software.

The result of these big programs is people blindly using modules created by others, built on top of ever more modules. In theory this is good though. It is specialization. But we haven't done a good job of it. I think if we want to make software easier to write (and as a result better) the place to start is on the process of programming with more specialized pieces, be it a better module system or domain specific features in the programming language. I think it comes down to managing the complexity some a person can better view the big picture.

Re: Software disenchantment

#29

Post by emasser »

metalrain wrote: post #27
almostarockstar wrote: post #9

It's an interesting game we are playing. Take websites as an example. We have to build websites using CSS and HTML and JS because that is what works in browsers. But browsers have to build DOMs, layout engines and JS engines this way because that's the way we write code. It's nobody's fault. It's evolution with a bad fitness function. We need a new start. A new paradigm.

In a sense AMP is the answer, produce less by having explicit limits while not throwing all tooling out. While AMP is somewhat more technically complex it's much simpler when you consider what it disallows. However technology/solution is only tool, real problem is in the domain of users, how to make useful systems, how to make users care, technology is irrelevant for most of us.

So in a sense, web browsers are a bit to promiscuous. Website builders would have more incentive to properly engineer their websites if browsers were pickier. One issue with that is that it is the websites visitors who are most likely to see the errors and not the designer of the site.

Re: Software disenchantment

#30

Post by jasonhanley »

If anything, the rants about this are getting better. That's probably a good sign. This rant is at least 10x better than mine from last year :) https://www.jasonhanley.com/blog/2017/08/when-did-software-g...

To the author: I'm with you. Recently rebuilt my website and blog as an experiment in efficiency.

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