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The Software Crisis

wryl.tech

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Re: The Software Crisis

#131

Post by wryl »

mindB wrote: post #124
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…

Hi wryl. I'm interested in hearing your follow-up to this post, so I tried to add your log to my feed reader, but I couldn't find an rss/atom feed, which is the only way I'll remember to check back in. Do you have a feed I can follow?

Hi! Yes! I'm intending on adding an RSS feed at https://wryl.tech/log/feed.rss within the next few days.

I have a habit of hand-writing the markup for the site, so it's missing a few features people expect from things like statically generated sites or hosted blog platforms.

I'm watching this thread for accessibility and feedback, and am taking the suggestions to heart!

Re: The Software Crisis

#132

Post by wryl »

croemer wrote: post #117
wryl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that certainly wasn't my intention, but in an environment of "I have a silver bullet and it'll cost you $X", I can understand the sentiment. At the same time, I do want to show that I have confidence in my ideas. Hubris and confidence must be applied in equal parts.

Hubris and confidence are two sides of the same coin. Did you maybe mean to say that one should balance hubris with humility to avoid coming across as arrogant?

Yep, that's what I meant. Lots of comments, not a lot of time for proofreading!

Re: The Software Crisis

#133

Post by jdbernard »

wvenable wrote: post #89
jdbernard wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But yes, sometimes the phone doesn't stop vibrating. I failed to communicate clearly. Yes, I agree, the scope of human achievement is amazing, software included. However, the issues with software go far deeper than just the trivial example I gave of the phone. It's pervasive and pernicious. I assume most software developers understand this as lived experience, but I'll elaborate more. Almost every single person I k…

I think I agree with you but disagree with the article. > But because of the things called out in this article, these magical tools and technologies are plagued by endless amounts of things that just don't work right, break randomly, and fail in unexpected ways. There is way more software out there than one can even imagine responsible for literally every aspect of human society. There is an insatiable need for more…

Yes, I think broadly we agree. Thanks for the discussion.

> What does that have to do with abstractions or the lack of physical constraints?

Someone like Steve Jobs becomes a forcing function to maintain a high bar of quality. He's the exception that proves the rule. In the general case you can't rely on someone like Steve Jobs, but in other domains you still have a higher minimal quality bar driven by physical constraints.

I concede that in every domain it is true that "cheap stuff made quickly breaks." My argument is that even then there is a minimal bar that is set by physical constraints. If the bridge doesn't stand it doesn't get built. If you cut too many corners or rush too much it just doesn't get built, or has to be rebuilt. This leads to overages and delay, but at the end of the process the bridge meets the physical specs or it falls over. I think the lack of any such physical constraints means that there is no such minimal bar for software and the floor of quality is therefore much lower, even in software by large, successful, and well-funded, "marquee" companies.

Re: The Software Crisis

#134

Post by joe_the_user »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #113
danhon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our society / societies may well be able to afford to build this quantity of software well. We choose not to.

I don't know how/haven't seen an attempt to approach this question by a method other than "my hunch", but as a software engineer "my hunch" is it would cost at least 10-50x as much human labor (not just engineers but designer and UX researchers as well as all the other support roles like project managers etc) to build the software "well" (including more customization for individual enterprises or uses), and that it w…

You could easily reduce the amount of software that exists today by 10-50x and have an adequate amount of software for virtually all purposes.

But this incredibly hypothetical. A lot of software labor today revolving around manipulating the user rather than aiding them so where we'd go with "better" versions of this is hard to say.

Re: The Software Crisis

#135

Post by devwastaken »

Example - "I made an app" is considered more signal than developing the underlying tools and libraries that app needed to exist. Making everything "easy" backfires because those doing the hard work doing realize it's a rigged game.

Re: The Software Crisis

#136

Post by wvenable »

jdbernard wrote: post #133
wvenable wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with you but disagree with the article. > But because of the things called out in this article, these magical tools and technologies are plagued by endless amounts of things that just don't work right, break randomly, and fail in unexpected ways. There is way more software out there than one can even imagine responsible for literally every aspect of human society. There is an insatiable need for more…

Yes, I think broadly we agree. Thanks for the discussion. > What does that have to do with abstractions or the lack of physical constraints? Someone like Steve Jobs becomes a forcing function to maintain a high bar of quality. He's the exception that proves the rule. In the general case you can't rely on someone like Steve Jobs, but in other domains you still have a higher minimal quality bar driven by physical const…

That seems like an arbitrary distinction. Plenty of software gets built that doesn't meet the minimal standards -- and you know what happens? It doesn't get deployed. How is that different from the bridge that doesn't get built or falls over?

All the same factors are at play: poor planning, insufficient resources, bad management, inexperienced workers, insufficient funding, lack of testing.

Plenty of construction projects have corners cut. Just like with software, it is someone's job to patch it later.

Re: The Software Crisis

#137

Post by jocoda »

This is one of those articles that you read and realize that that was a waste of time. Concludes that the prime villain of this supposed crisis is abstraction and provides a simple solution - "... solution ... a constraint on the number of layers of abstractions we are allowed to apply.

Uh-huh, all hail to the coming of the layer police.

Ends - "Things can be better. I'll show you how." - @author - Maybe it would have been better to under promise and over deliver instead?

----

But that got me asking whether there might indeed be a software crisis and yes, I think there is a crises of sorts on the personal level. Maybe for others too. It's not one that is structural as the author proposes. It's that the software landscape is so vast and chaotic. There's so much going on that it's almost impossible to know where to focus. FOMO I suppose, too much to do and not enough time.

So many clever people, so much energy, doing all kinds of amazing things. For many different reasons, some good, some not. A lot of it looks, to coin a phrase, like fractal duplication, e.g. yet another JS framework, yet another game engine, yet another bullshit SAAS, just because. Seems inherent redundancy is built in to the systems.

Good times, I suppose.

Re: The Software Crisis

#138

Post by dualogy »

bckr wrote: post #112
socketcluster wrote: post #111

> It is no longer easy to build software It is very easy if you know the right tools for the right job, but information about these are suppressed so you never hear about them. What the vast majority of people think the tech tooling landscape looks like and what it actually looks like are very different. The tools we know about are mostly horrible. They try to be silver bullets but they're really not good for anythin…

Link it!

Although not sure, I guess socketcluster might be referring to what is further elaborated on in these earlier posts I just quickly stalked:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40326185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40530828

Re: The Software Crisis

#139

Post by Too »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #121
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…

Windows 3.1 and Word easily fit on a 40MB hard drive with plenty leftover. Word operated on systems with as little as 2MB RAM on a single core 16MHz 80386. Modern microcontrollers put this to shame! Word then didn’t lack for much compared to today’s version. Windows and Office require now, 50-100GB disk just to function? 1000X for what gain? This is sheer insanity, but we overlook it — our modern systems have 5000-10…

You mean the Word where i had to save the document every 20 seconds just to be sure i didn't loose my school assignment from crashes at the most inconvenient moment.

It left scars in my spline, to the point that I still have to actively hold myself back from the reflex of hitting Ctrl+S halfway through this comment.

Re: The Software Crisis

#140

Post by socketcluster »

bckr wrote: post #112
socketcluster wrote: post #111

> It is no longer easy to build software It is very easy if you know the right tools for the right job, but information about these are suppressed so you never hear about them. What the vast majority of people think the tech tooling landscape looks like and what it actually looks like are very different. The tools we know about are mostly horrible. They try to be silver bullets but they're really not good for anythin…

Link it!

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0PJ1KlxDtM
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