Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

simplethread.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 180 posts

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#131

Post by cookiengineer »

systemvoltage wrote: post #53
boris wrote: post #20

One aspect that is not mentioned is that we build software on top of an ever-increasing number of first-to-market, low-quality, building blocks. And by low-quality I mean "worse is better"/MVP/"everyone makes mistakes"/"leaky abstractions"/etc -- pick your favorite. As a result, we spend more and more time dealing with someone else's mistakes rather than making forward progress.

Totally agree. Move fast and break things? Let’s not. Let’s build carefully and methodically. Teach others how to build quality software. Stop regurgitating what you watch on YouTube 4 hour course. I’ve seen horrific, I mean absolutely bottom of the barrel code being taught to others. Especially in JS community - yes, I’m picking at you guys again. When teaching goes to shit, you’re breeding and propagating, institut…

> Especially in JS community - yes, I’m picking at you guys again.

Don't worry, we're not offended because we know it's true.

I bet that pretty much most of NPM's package index consists only of weekend prototype projects that are abandoned afterwards. It's sad to see that there's literally no baseline of quality measurements on NPM, and people give them stars far too quickly, without realizing that it's literally a single line of code with megabytes of useless testing around it.

Most of the patterns in UI/UX frameworks that come and go all the time are actually very very old paradigms that have been known in Computer Science since the 60s-70s. I always feel like no one reads a book about Software Engineering or Software Patterns anymore, let alone tries to find patterns in alternatives and makes a pro/contra list of features to find out what they actually want.

All go hush hush and rush rush to put out their next starlet on GitHub, without actually thinking about a software architecture anymore. Those that do are somehow invisible to the masses; and can never gain really a traction behind their ideas, which leads to the abandoned code problem either way.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#132

Post by dvdkon »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #109
giantDinosaur wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to write anything that supports any IE version < 11 on principle. And I will relish the day I can kill support for IE11, which is hopefully rapidly approaching. I admit I do enjoy a stack which includes text files, though.

It seems to me like that stance does nothing helpful, only lets the developer off the hook of attempting something difficult and annoying. At the same time, it leaves human users who can't change their browser high and dry.

Less annoying work for me is something helpful in my books. If I can make my job easier at the expense of people using unsupported technology, I will, otherwise I'd be stuck supporting that one guy who refuses to move from Mac OS X 10.4.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#133

Post by jstimpfle »

tom_walters wrote: post #93

I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions of this article. It doesn't take long to "build software" - git was built in a weekend, Facebook a similar timeline. When the environment is right there's no upper bound on the pace of delivery, it's just that modern day dev is, in many places, less about quality of the output (in terms of product/market fit and user value, not code quality) and more about the satisfactio…

That's an overstatement. You can build impressive MVP and tech demos in a short amount of time, yes. But that requires that the author has already been thinking about the types of problems that come up in this domain for a long long time. Rest assured that Git certainly hasn't been created in a weekend.

Also, you can't create a product in this short amount of time. (There are some websites that do almost nothing at all, and that are very profitable, but those aren't engineering problems). Think how long git has been maintained, polished, and extended since its inception. And still people complain.

Software is a learning process, otherwise people wouldn't be so obsessed about it. And learning takes time. No matter which way you're approaching it.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#134

Post by xorcist »

sriku wrote: post #89
caseyross wrote: post #58

Software takes a long time to build because it's always new. That is, software is trivially copy-able, so there is no reason to spend effort duplicating any software that already exists. (Legal reasons and "not-invented-here" syndrome notwithstanding.) This is a huge different from how the "real" world works, where almost all of the work involved in building, say, a car, is actually just the work of assembling identi…

> Software takes a long time to build because it's always new. And yet it feels like authentication and authorization code need to be rewritten for every application.

That's because it is mostly integration that is done, not so much construction. AA needs to permeate the whole project, from the details of a function call to high level design like making sure an actor can call another part of the software stack to perform an otherwise unauthorized operation.

"Building" software can mean any number of things. When you get down to the specifics, there is no getting around using specific language.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#135

Post by PeterisP »

username90 wrote: post #115
krisoft wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to sound smartass but building an identical clone of an existing application is very fast and often totally automated. That’s what your compiler chain does.

Change the criteria that you should rewrite it in another framework and the point still stands. You already have a perfect specification in the existing code, no unknowns at all, just implement it. Yet it still takes months or years.

A good physical analogy is the historical Soviet recreation of USA B-29 Superfortress as Tu-4, based on copying all the parts (based on 4 captured aircraft), but needing to rework to the metric standards (i.e. so wherever you have, for example, 1/4 inch i.e. 6.35mm sheet metal or fasteners or whatever, you have to pick 6 or 7mm instead (because your "different framework" doesn't supply 1/4 inch stuff), which changes the weight distribution and structural integrity, which requires additional tweaks). You're making a functional copy, still took more a year just for the designs. The same with other physical objects - as long as the underlying framework or supply chain changes, it tends to require re-engineering.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#136

Post by Leherenn »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99
caseyross wrote: post #58

Software takes a long time to build because it's always new. That is, software is trivially copy-able, so there is no reason to spend effort duplicating any software that already exists. (Legal reasons and "not-invented-here" syndrome notwithstanding.) This is a huge different from how the "real" world works, where almost all of the work involved in building, say, a car, is actually just the work of assembling identi…

I think focusing on this comparison to the real world assemblies and constructions doesn't yield much insight. The equivalent of a car being assembled is a compiler building an executable from source. You can consider factories to be just very, very long compiles, and forget about it. The question of why software takes a long time to build pertains to the coding phase, to which real life's analogue is drafting/design…

> for physical products, drafting/design is nearly free (capex & opex of the assembly phase dominates)

It really depends on the industry. It's particularly bad in heavily regulated industries (pharma, aerospace, ...). On the other hand, creating a blog is probably the equivalent of designing a new t-shirt.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#137

Post by wdiamond »

Software is like writing a book. A good book fits all new pieces in a new story and makes sense. A fast book is just copy of known pieces and known story and don't really fits well. A "PRO" in market steal not old ideas, a "PRO" in the field create detailed raw new sketchs that are not ready to sell.

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#138

Post by kwanbix »

wdiamond wrote: post #137

Software is like writing a book. A good book fits all new pieces in a new story and makes sense. A fast book is just copy of known pieces and known story and don't really fits well. A "PRO" in market steal not old ideas, a "PRO" in the field create detailed raw new sketchs that are not ready to sell.

"... programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art; there are lovely gems and brilliant coups hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever, by the very nature of the process. You can learn a lot about an individual just by reading through his code, even in hexadecimal..."

Re: Why does it take so long to build software? (2020)

#139

Post by fendy3002 »

caseyross wrote: post #58

Software takes a long time to build because it's always new. That is, software is trivially copy-able, so there is no reason to spend effort duplicating any software that already exists. (Legal reasons and "not-invented-here" syndrome notwithstanding.) This is a huge different from how the "real" world works, where almost all of the work involved in building, say, a car, is actually just the work of assembling identi…

And add to that the number of custom software are many times more than most things in real life. Nobody will asks for their BMW to transport a cow, or for their BMW to connect / communicate with other's Mercedes.

But we often asked for accounting app to able to handle employee's payroll and paid leaves.

Then with that many demand for custom software, we also got many times software manufacturer than car manufacturer. Inexperienced manufacturer (programmer) will make development even slower. Not to mention that the client even don't know what they want.

Post reply on HN