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The Software Crisis

wryl.tech

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Re: The Software Crisis

#41

Post by wryl »

seansh wrote: post #40
wryl wrote: post #16

Hi! Author here. I think it's important to address certain aspects of this post that people tend to misunderstand, so I'll just list them here to save myself the effort. * I do not argue against abstractions, but against the unrestricted application of them. * I do not advocate for a reversion to more constrained platforms as a solution. * I do not advocate for users becoming "more technical" in a "suck it up" fashio…

I've been a fan of handmade and seems like a new blog in the same spirit is born. I look forward to reading more of your writings. I have recently started writing myself and paying more attention to what I read. I really liked your style and enjoyed reading it. So please keep writing!

Thank you very much! Very much in line with the handmade ethos, and I'm hoping to get involved with more handmade (and handmade-like) things in the future. :)

Re: The Software Crisis

#42

Post by ukuina »

omnicognate wrote: post #12
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> It's catastrophic when they don't." I have found this not to be the case. Very often, an inaccurate mental model is the ideal user state, and it's my job to afford and reinforce it. But that's just me, and my experience. I'm sure there's a ton of folks that have found better ways.

Personally I can't bear software that contorts itself to conform to an incorrect mental model. I find it alien and unusable. I don't want the inaccurate mental model and cannot force myself to accept it, but the contortions and don't-look-behind-the-curtain prevent me from forming an accurate one. That doesn't mean I don't want abstractions. It means I think what constitutes a good abstraction is determined as much b…

Apple Community is a perfect example of users assuming the underlying software is always correct, for every possible use-case, and that the user is at fault for going against the grain or, in many cases, *using the software as advertised*.

Re: The Software Crisis

#43

Post by jdbernard »

morning-coffee wrote: post #20
wryl wrote: post #16

Hi! Author here. I think it's important to address certain aspects of this post that people tend to misunderstand, so I'll just list them here to save myself the effort. * I do not argue against abstractions, but against the unrestricted application of them. * I do not advocate for a reversion to more constrained platforms as a solution. * I do not advocate for users becoming "more technical" in a "suck it up" fashio…

It's hard to get past the hubris wrapped up in the statement "I'll show you how"... as if the tens of thousands of bright engineer's whose shoulders you stand on were incapable and you're the savior... maybe you are! (But just adding the word "try" in that sentence would reduce the perceived arrogance by orders of magnitude.)

I didn't read it that way. I read it as an introduction to a counter-cultural paradigm shift away from the "move fast and break things" and "abstract over it" mindsets. I'm very interested in the path they are going to outline.

Re: The Software Crisis

#44

Post by jdbernard »

wvenable wrote: post #35

This article presupposes that this software crisis actually exists or is a significant problem. The crisis is all this these things: Projects running over-budget Projects running over-time Software was very inefficient Software was of low quality Software often did not meet requirements Projects were unmanageable and code difficult to maintain Software was never delivered Now take the word "software" out and how many…

The thing that is unique about software is the lack of physical constraints which serve as a natural forcing function or filter on quality. With a bridge, for example, at some level it must meet a minimum bar of structural integrity, quality of materials, etc. or it will fall over from its own weight. As a cook, there is a bare minimum I have to hit with the quality of my ingredients and skill of preparation in order for the food to be palatable and edible.

No such limits exist on software beyond maybe performance and memory constraints. But both of those are in abundance, so we can and do patch over crap endlessly. Every one of us has had that moment where we think or say, "how does this even work?" But until the user hits the wrong edge case they have no idea how rickety the underlying code is.

> This happens billions of times a day, all across the world, and mostly flawlessly.

No, I'd argue it's much more common for there to be flaws. They're just not obvious. They're random crap like my phone continuing to vibrate after I've answered the call until I get another call or text. Or options disappearing from a web app because something didn't load 100% correctly. Or the joys of flaky Bluetooth pairing. The list is endless.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again" is evidence of this. It's normal for software systems to get into such inscrutably subtle bad states that the only fix is to wipe everything and reload from scratch.

Re: The Software Crisis

#45

Post by kleiba »

OT: anyone's got an idea why Firefox would not be able to display that page in reader mode (button in the URL bar not showing up)?

For some reason, my eyes cannot cope with white text on black backgrounds, so I usually just go to reader mode in cases like this article. But here, this option does not exist, for some reason?

Re: The Software Crisis

#46

Post by [deleted] »

wvenable wrote: post #35

This article presupposes that this software crisis actually exists or is a significant problem. The crisis is all this these things: Projects running over-budget Projects running over-time Software was very inefficient Software was of low quality Software often did not meet requirements Projects were unmanageable and code difficult to maintain Software was never delivered Now take the word "software" out and how many…

[deleted]

Re: The Software Crisis

#47

Post by williamcotton »

Shallow and composable is something we all experience when using UNIX tooling.

GUIs are where this all falls apart as they are literal islands that don’t communicate with each other in a composable manner.

I’ve been experimenting with some GUI-meets-shell-pipeline ideas with a tool I’ve been working on call guish.

https://github.com/williamcotton/guish

I’m curious to know if anyone knows of any similar tools or approaches to composable GUIs!

Re: The Software Crisis

#48

Post by wryl »

kleiba wrote: post #45

OT: anyone's got an idea why Firefox would not be able to display that page in reader mode (button in the URL bar not showing up)? For some reason, my eyes cannot cope with white text on black backgrounds, so I usually just go to reader mode in cases like this article. But here, this option does not exist, for some reason?

Thanks for the feedback regarding this, I've been trying to find a middle-ground between my authoring style (writing raw HTML with low overhead, instead of using a static site generator) and "portable readability".

I have a feeling it's just me not annotating the markup correctly, which I am in the process of fixing and porting around!

Re: The Software Crisis

#49

Post by hnthrow289570 »

wryl wrote: post #16

Hi! Author here. I think it's important to address certain aspects of this post that people tend to misunderstand, so I'll just list them here to save myself the effort. * I do not argue against abstractions, but against the unrestricted application of them. * I do not advocate for a reversion to more constrained platforms as a solution. * I do not advocate for users becoming "more technical" in a "suck it up" fashio…

I think this might be premature if you're trying to apply this to how the world makes money with software. There's too much of the economy that depends on adding another abstraction layer to make money, so you'd need to rewire that as well unless we just want to break things. You'd eventually have to tell a business "no" because they're +1 abstraction layer above the limit.

I think most of us realize that working at corporate is still a necessary evil as long as we need to pay for stuff. Frankly that sector can burn because they've been taking advantage of developers. Most of the money goes to people above you, performance bonuses are not the norm, etc. We shouldn't be actively trying to give them improvements for free because of this behavior. Let them follow the hobby/passion projects and learn these practices and limits on their own.

Re: The Software Crisis

#50

Post by wryl »

williamcotton wrote: post #47

Shallow and composable is something we all experience when using UNIX tooling. GUIs are where this all falls apart as they are literal islands that don’t communicate with each other in a composable manner. I’ve been experimenting with some GUI-meets-shell-pipeline ideas with a tool I’ve been working on call guish. https://github.com/williamcotton/guish I’m curious to know if anyone knows of any similar tools or appro…

This is really, really cool! Definitely going to share this around, I love tools like this. They bring so much visibility into dark spaces.
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