Ask HN: Is Software Getting Worse?

Same with Mac OS constantly asking Apple whether it's fine to start a program. Which was fun not long ago when that Apple server went down and people couldn't start programs anymore as long as the Mac was connected to the internet because Apple of course couldn't imagine their own creation being fallible.

OMG this!

I grew up on Windows and only around XP did it begin to get okay. Before then it was mostly garbage, and after then it was Vista! I have my issues with modern MacOS, but it's generally pretty amazing. I feel like asking the same of these Jonathan Blow acolytes -- When exactly was this golden age? Are you sure it's not nostalgia?

If your poison is Linux, do you remember what the Linux desktop looked like in the early 2000s? On the server, it's ridiculously more resilient and polished.

FWIW I have tremendous respect for Jonathan Blow as a software engineer, but I think this has always been mostly a self aggrandizing pitch, from a craftsperson to people who like the idea of crafted things, that is -- if all the software in the world is getting worse, then there must be some priesthood of the worthy. When, in fact, the "bad" software Jonathan Blow sees is software produced simply under different constraints (expectation is software costs nothing, it must run everywhere/on the web, it's part of a distributed system, compatibility with earlier crappy software really matters, it's made by people who simply care less about the it being a perfect experience, because its not their game). Of course, some new software is actually bad, but I'm not certain software is actually getting worse.

Are you talking about gatekeeper flags or app signatures? As far as I know, both of those can be managed locally, I don’t think Apple is informed every time you try to open a process.

Almost nobody cares about the value to the user anymore. Value to the owner/seller of the product is what matters.

This results in poor UX, apps spying you constantly, useless features and easy to fix bugfixes that aren't fixed in years.

As a software developer I'm disappointed in this approach. If I can I try my best to produce the best experience for the end user, but in the end I can only get satisfaction in open source...

But open source is sometimes hell too!

Just recently I found super popular open source library that earns $200k each years from donations, but the its Github is filled with issues and PRs. Author doesn't care, the money flows anyway. It hurts to see most major issues are already fixed by PRs, but the author doesn't even bother to merge & release.

Sad.

Software is getting worse, yes, although to be fair and mildly abrasive:

1) If you haven't actually lived through the arc you can't really spot this so you invite "okay boomer" sniping if you point it out.

2) Knowledge does not update the genome, therefore knowledge transmission is A Hard Problem, therefore because "developing software" is not a small and formal discipline the lessons learned by experience are not reliably/effectively/efficiently/at-all transmitted to the newer "generation" of "developers". This gives the appearance of "not learning from mistakes" or "things degrading" but the reality is simply that everyone is always reinventing things they don't understand as a result.

3) There are too many people engaging in the act of producing software who shouldn't actually be doing it. This is true of all fields where demand outstrips supply. LLMs are going to solve this problem in a most unfortunate manner.

4) The reality that cannot be discussed is that "stupid" is a much larger problem than anyone realizes, it extends well into areas that people normally think of as "requiring high intelligence", and it exacerbates all of the above.

5) We incentivize and, for reasons already given, actually justify behaviors that also tend to produce this. Ex: I assure you that somewhere out there is a product manager with a drug habit desperate to find a way to turn hammers into smart devices with a subscription service, NOT because this will help people who use hammers, but because this will increase profits for a company that produces hammers. This is an objectively bad and harmful practice that we encourage daily.

Soooooo, again, yep.