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The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

techtrenches.substack.com

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Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#21

Post by quotemstr »

ealexhudson wrote: post #3

I don't want to sound too dismissive, but all these arguments have been brought up time and again. The move from assembler to high level languages. The introduction of OOP. Component architecture / COM / CORBA / etc. The development of the web browser. The introduction of Java. 2018 isn't "the start of the decline", it's just another data point on a line that leads from, y'know, Elite 8-bit on a single tape in a few…

One salient difference is that typically abstraction layers trade performance (usually less than polemicists like the article author think) for improvements in developer efficiency, safety, generality, and iteration speed.

Current tools seem to get us worse results on bug counts, safety, and by some measures even developer efficiency.

Maybe we'll end up incorporating these tools the same way we did during previous cycles of tool adoption, but it's a difference worth noting.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#22

Post by fkyoureadthedoc »

swiftcoder wrote: post #11
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #2

I’ve read some versions of this post dozens of times over the years. At first I would nod along, sympathetic but now I realise that we shouldn’t chase some platonic ideal of perfect software. It has to exist in the real world and there will always be trade offs. In the end, most software exists to make businesses money.

There's quite a wide gap between "platonic ideal of perfect software" and "leaks 32 GB of memory" in which we could aim...

And fortunately that seems to be where the vast majority of software lands.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#23

Post by ieie3366 »

Tractor8626 wrote: post #10

Just false nostalgia memory. 20 years ago things werent any better. Software didn't consume gigabytes of ram because there was no gigabytes of ram to consume.

Anyone remember the good old 90s and win95 or win98? Yeah those were the days, the quality was absolutely perfect nothing ever crashed /s

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#24

Post by psunavy03 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #16

Software is also pumped out now at a faster rate than ever, runs on commodity hardware, is delivered digitally, often run on platforms that can force near real-time user updates, with much higher complexity. Eventually we will hit hard physical limits that require we really be "engineers" again, but throughput is still what matters. It's still comparatively great paying profession with low unemployment, and an engine…

> It's still comparatively great paying profession with low unemployment,

Tell that to the new CS grads.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#25

Post by somewhereoutth »

I've often idly conjectured that a 'perfect virus' would quietly replicate, and then occasionally flip a one or zero here and there. The damage would be imperceptible to begin with, but then eventually critical 'ones and zeros' would be affected, and it would be too late to try to figure out what systems were clean.

Never in my wildest imaginings did I come up with something as diabolical as LLM generated code.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#26

Post by creativeSlumber »

muldvarp wrote: post #4

The fact that software quality plays zero role in commercial software engineering is one of the reasons why I think LLMs will easily eat our lunch. Bugs simply don't matter.

I would have disagreed with you in the past by saying, "until it breaks something critical and you loose customers and business", but then again people just moved on from the Crowdstrike incident like business as usual.If something like that which grounded critical service globally and had an estimated 10 Billion Dollar economic impact doesn't change mindsets,I don't know what will.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#27

Post by gjsman-1000 »

ealexhudson wrote: post #3

I don't want to sound too dismissive, but all these arguments have been brought up time and again. The move from assembler to high level languages. The introduction of OOP. Component architecture / COM / CORBA / etc. The development of the web browser. The introduction of Java. 2018 isn't "the start of the decline", it's just another data point on a line that leads from, y'know, Elite 8-bit on a single tape in a few…

I think another part of this, is that Tech is perhaps the only industry that hasn't quite gotten over itself yet.

Writing code is artistic the same way plumbing is artistic.

Writing code is artistic the same way home wiring is artistic.

Writing code is artistic the same way HVAC is artistic.

Which is to say, yes, there is satisfaction to be had, but companies don't care as long as it gets the job done without too many long-term problems, and never will care beyond that. What we call tech debt, an electrician calls aluminum wiring. What we call tech debt, a plumber calls lead solder joints. And I strongly suspect that one day, when the dust settles on how to do things correctly (just like it did for electricity, plumbing, flying, haircutting, and every other trade eventually), we will become a licensed field. Every industry has had that wild experimentation phase in the beginning, and has had that phase end.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#28

Post by ertgbnm »

Unrelated but my current AI text flag is the use of "It's not X. It's Y."

It's become so repetitive recently. Examples from this post alone:

1. "This isn't about AI. The quality crisis started years before ChatGPT existed."

2. "The degradation isn't gradual—it's exponential."

3. "These aren't feature requirements. They're memory leaks that nobody bothered to fix."

4. "This wasn't sophisticated. This was Computer Science 101 error handling that nobody implemented."

5. "This isn't an investment. It's capitulation."

6. "senior developers don't emerge from thin air. They grow from juniors who:"

7. "The solution isn't complex. It's just uncomfortable."

Currently this rhetorical device is like nails on a chalkboard for me.

Anyway, this isn't a critique of your point. It's pedantry from me. :)

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#29

Post by bibelo »

firmretention wrote: post #20

I find it ironic that an article that rails against AI usage contains a sentence like this. >When you need $364 billion in hardware to run software that should work on existing machines, you're not scaling—you're compensating for fundamental engineering failures. IYKYK.

it's not raging against AI, it's raging against AI to create consistent code

to me, it's OK to use AI to check grammar and help you for some creative stuff, like writing a text

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#30

Post by pydry »

codeulike wrote: post #8

Hes right that cloudstike was terrible incompetence but I find it hard to worry about the memory leak stats. If lots of software leaks memory these days its because people have accepted that and its probably not economic to trace and fox those bugs. A lot of software is disposable or transient these days, like an app you only use twice a month

Everyone else in this thread is missing that crowdstrike level bug would have taken down the company in the past.

I had a friend practically scream at his C level management after the crowdstrike bug that it should be ripped out because it was making the company less safe. They were deaf to all arguments. Why? Insurance mandated crowdstrike. Still. Even now.

This isnt really about software it is about a concentration of market power in a small number of companies. These companies can let the quality of their products go to shit and still dominate.

A piece of garbage like crowdstrike or microsoft teams still wouldnt be tolerated as a startup's product but tech behemoths can increasingly get away with it.

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