Apps Getting Worse • Hacker News Board

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#211

Post by abledon » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #133

wonnage wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify has steadily gotten worse over the years. I remember a long time ago they had a cool feature where you could long press on a song to preview it. There was also a decently organized library tab, not as advanced as itunes but passable. All gone. Now you get an algorithmic homepage that's constantly shifting and trying to push podcasts on you...

The engineers that did that have gone, replaced by newer folks... As companies get larger, the engineering talent reverts to the mean. The first crop of engineers, that were passionate about it, and made it a success. After they move on, they are replaced with average corp. employee, that joins Spotify as safe/boring job. Hence anything interesting gets removed, and the most boring features survive. Ps. I was one of…

I'd love to see a linkedin scraper tool that 'visualizes' where the engineers go who originally worked on a product.

like here, where are those spotify engineers now... and how do the products they work on now, compare

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#212

Post by uniqueid » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

gherkinnn wrote: post #84

j-pb wrote: post #9

The ecosystem has also lost its mojo, and Apple is the one that killed it. The good old days of really good, dedicated mac software studios are over. Made by Sofa, Delicious Monster, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, Panic Inc, Rogue Amoeba, Strange Flavour. These were really great software studios that really upheld a standard of excellence for Mac software. But how are you supposed to keep that up when apple forces you into a…

Electron has killed it. Fast browsers have killed it. Saas killed it. There are many problems with Apple’s stores, but I don’t see how this is one.

I can't say this view has it entirely backwards because part of the phenomenon is due to the strengths of the web today and of Electron. But the 'backward' part of the argument is that native Apple software could, but no longer does, provide its own strengths to counter the web and Electron.

I love (old) Mac software and I hate Electron software yet if I sat down to create a commercial app today, I'd use Electron. Here's why:

- I don't feel the Mac's UX is great these days. If my app doesn't benefit from a consistent and elegant GUI, I might as well do it with web tech.

- I can't keep up with Xcode and the OS changing constantly. There was a time when you'd get a couple years between OS upgrades, when Apple's documentation wasn't (entirely) useless

- Desktop software on the Mac involves so much complexity today (eg: sandboxing, certificates, iCloud, icon formats and sizes, etc) that I don't want to deal with it

The Apple ecosystem doesn't offer enough advantages for me anymore to warrant the effort.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#213

Post by wott » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:44 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #173

grishka wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recently favorite question to ask people: why do you need a development team at a company whose product has already been developed, is feature-complete, and everyone's fine with it? A bank doesn't need a full-time development team for example.

In my experience, bank software (customer facing) could use a development team.

Mine seems to use a different one each year :-/

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#214

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #109

I watched a ted talk ages ago and it stuck with me (Sorry I forget which, maybe this one https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choi... , please correct me if I’m wrong) It said that researchers tried for ages, and at great expense, to find ‘the perfect’ pasta sauce and couldn’t do it. No-one would ever all agree. It turned out you needed to make 3 or 4 versions and different people would find each p…

They can actually afford building several versions: one for revular joe user, and one highly customisable power users. They can even allow (gasp) plugins!

I mean, Winamp had skins and plugins more than 20 years ago. Surely it isn't some hopelessly lost skill, like making the roman concrete or the greek fire?!

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#215

Post by blibble » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #203

topkai22 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“A bank doesn’t need a full time development team for example” Banks and finance are like the number one employer of software developers outside of pure tech companies. I might be misunderstanding your point, but a bank doing digital banking needs a huge IT staff, including software devs. Even if no new products are being developed (unlikely), they support changes to common industry systems, redevelop systems for ret…

> Banks and finance are like the number one employer of software developers outside of pure tech companies. Right now, with all the churn that only serves to update various financial numbers in databases and is generally useless for the society at large. As an end user, I view a bank as a box to keep my money so I don't have to deal with cash. That's really it. It already works for me as it is right now. A rather pop…

> As an end user, I view a bank as a box to keep my money so I don't have to deal with cash. That's really it.

I personally like features such as savings accounts (which require a treasury department), a brokerage, lending, mortgages, wire transfers, detection of fraud, and so-on

a bank does far more than provide a safe place for your cash to sit

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#216

Post by fendy3002 » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #177

sushisource wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope people will use Spotify as a case study in how to fuck up a UI over time. The service itself is fine, I quite like some of the music it finds for me on discover, but the UI is on a slow death march towards complete uselessness, and some features have always been hopelessly broken (queuing). From a business standpoint I find it fascinating. It's about as perfect as an example it gets of "if it ain't broke, don'…

I hope there's some UI/UX designers that can explain this to me. It often appears that design changes are changed just to change. Doing things like changing the clock from right to left (Android). Moving a bar that's existed to another location (Spotify). Removing color hints (Signal). And so many other things. Things that basically your users have been trained to look at and then need to be retrained. Removing hinti…

Most of the time it's for inner achievements for the product manager or designers part.

Another is they just changing their ui/ux lead and they have different views.

It can also redesigned to match style updates, useful for fashion, travel or wedding sites.

Sometimes the menu increases that a list of buttons can't accommodate anymore so it's changed to it's own page or drop-down.

Sometimes they want people to be confused and ask the changes in more general forums, generating free publications.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#217

Post by mwcampbell » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #178

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #52

> It’s obvious. Every high-tech company has people called “Product Managers” (PMs) whose job it is to work with customers and management and engineers to define what products should do. No PM in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold. That’s not visionary. That doesn’t get you promoted This mentality isn't unique to product managers. Mobile…

I'm an Android developer who despises Kotlin and all the other trendy stuff. I often get laughed at for my views. However, my apps are ridiculously slim and fast, so there's that. Oh and I don't have a job. It really feels to me as if developers these days care much more about the development process itself, and how their code looks, than about the end product of their work that the users see. Same for designers — th…

Runtime efficiency is just one consideration to be balanced against others. Maybe you would have an easier time getting a job if you would accept the new stuff and be willing to compromise on runtime efficiency so your team could crank out more features and more quickly meet its business goals. Note: the issue isn't your individual productivity; being willing to go along with the pack has its own advantages.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#218

Post by sombremesa » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #9

The ecosystem has also lost its mojo, and Apple is the one that killed it. The good old days of really good, dedicated mac software studios are over. Made by Sofa, Delicious Monster, SubEthaEdit, TextMate, Panic Inc, Rogue Amoeba, Strange Flavour. These were really great software studios that really upheld a standard of excellence for Mac software. But how are you supposed to keep that up when apple forces you into a…

> The good old days of really good, dedicated mac software studios are over.

Considering that companies like Unity were in the same boat, I'm a bit hesitant to point the finger squarely at Apple without considering the decisions these companies made for themselves.

Decisions such as making a 99 cent one-time purchase app and still expecting to succeed as a business.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#219

Post by MereInterest » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #131

kowlo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was wrong with VSCode?

For me, running more than one Electron app at a time for too long is a recipe for kernel panic. I only have two on my machine: VSCode, and Microsoft Azure Explorer. If I run them both at the same time, there's a 20% chance I'm going to have to reboot that day. Microsoft has enough money and resources to make a real program, but it chooses to be lazy and cheap.

I think there's a huge tragedy of the commons when it comes to RAM. I get all the arguments about unused RAM being wasted RAM, and that it is more effective to drop a cache at the last moment, just in case it would be used before then. But those arguments only apply if you have a single entity handling the allocations. Otherwise the program holding the memory has no idea that it should drop a cache to allow a different program to use the memory. If the single program is the OS, great. If there's a single large program using RAM such as a browser, then it's still workable but not so great. If you have more than one program each trying to eat 80% of the RAM available, then you're in a world of hurt.

And of course, every program thinks that it's the one and only important program running on the computer, which is how we get into the situation we're in.

Re: Apps Getting Worse

#220

Post by grishka » Sun, Aug 08, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

mwcampbell wrote: post #217

grishka wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Android developer who despises Kotlin and all the other trendy stuff. I often get laughed at for my views. However, my apps are ridiculously slim and fast, so there's that. Oh and I don't have a job. It really feels to me as if developers these days care much more about the development process itself, and how their code looks, than about the end product of their work that the users see. Same for designers — th…

Runtime efficiency is just one consideration to be balanced against others. Maybe you would have an easier time getting a job if you would accept the new stuff and be willing to compromise on runtime efficiency so your team could crank out more features and more quickly meet its business goals. Note: the issue isn't your individual productivity; being willing to go along with the pack has its own advantages.

> meet its business goals

I don't want to work at a place that has "business goals". I don't want to work on a proprietary product either. I just want to use my skills to make the world a better place, and moving money around ain't that. I don't want to participate in the rat race or help it in any shape or form.