Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 128 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#71

Post by hnfong »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #70
lkbm wrote: post #3

I think software has always been terribly buggy. Back in the day, things would crash (including your entire OS in many cases) all the time. These days, it's more often smaller, stupid UX issues, but that's been the situation for a few years. I've seen no difference over the past six months.

Yeah in Windows XP time if my computer didn't crash several times a week, it was odd.

Ironically Windows XP was the first "consumer" (i.e. not "workstation") Windows version to not crash several times a day.

In the 98/ME era, it was pretty common to reboot every couple hours or the system would randomly do that for you.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#72

Post by bpavuk »

I keep joking the same joke every time Space Marine 2 crashes my entire Linux desktop.

> with current state of the software, I imagine that "tech priest" is imminently going to become a real job

no really praising the Omnissiah sometimes helps me keep both SM2 and the browser open

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#73

Post by dethos »

david927 wrote: post #21

I thought about writing a comedy, set in the far future, where everything looks beautiful but nothing works right and it's just accepted (almost unnoticed) as a running gag throughout the film. Now I wonder how prescient that would be.

That would be a nice one.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#74

Post by dormento »

INCREDIBLY buggier, no comparison.

QA got it so bad in the current LLM-fueled carnival of stupid. Also, what would be categorized in the times of yore as a "lamer" has incredible free tools at their disposal, so vulnerabilities are a lot more common. Add to that the fact that every goddamn thing is connected to the internet and you got a recipe for disaster.

Even if you only hit 1/100 times... if you can shot 10000 times, you're still in the green.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#75

Post by reactordev »

JohnFen wrote: post #51
reactordev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct take. QA was under attack the entire Agile(TM) cycle we just exited. Now with agentic coding, the only thing keeping it on the rails is TDD. Either you write the tests or you write the spec. You are also responsible for the output. Welcome to the New Age. Management is just as clueless as they have ever been (some more than others) and yet most of them lack the intelligence to know exactly how it…

I agree with most of what you said, but this... > At this stage though you’ll be a grey beard and be unemployable. isn't as true as people think. I'm a graybeard and remain very much in demand, as do the majority of the graybeards I know.

YMMV but the vast majority of greybeards I know are unemployed or are doing other things than software engineering now.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#76

Post by bpavuk »

wmedrano wrote: post #67

I haven't notice any significant changes. My Linux experience gets more polished every year. Last serious issue I remember is a AMD GPU kernel crash around 2022(?). I feel like Android has always had its glitches. I can live with the current set, but each update has me nervous about the new set of bugs that will appear.

Linux is indeed getting better, but all the commercial software (and open source projects that happen to have AGENTS.md (cough Vicinae cough)) keep surprising me with random bugs

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#77

Post by btschaegg »

bpavuk wrote: post #72

I keep joking the same joke every time Space Marine 2 crashes my entire Linux desktop. > with current state of the software, I imagine that "tech priest" is imminently going to become a real job no really praising the Omnissiah sometimes helps me keep both SM2 and the browser open

> every time Space Marine 2 crashes my entire Linux desktop.

Sounds like a good situation for the litany of percussive maintenance.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#79

Post by Enginerrrd »

dormento wrote: post #74

INCREDIBLY buggier, no comparison. QA got it so bad in the current LLM-fueled carnival of stupid. Also, what would be categorized in the times of yore as a "lamer" has incredible free tools at their disposal, so vulnerabilities are a lot more common. Add to that the fact that every goddamn thing is connected to the internet and you got a recipe for disaster. Even if you only hit 1/100 times... if you can shot 10000 t…

Yeah substantial degradation in really basic functionality in the last 3-4 years.

I mean, new features I don’t use and useless UI changes have been added at a high rate over the same time period, but holy Christ, it’s pretty bad when some really basic functionality bugs are getting shipped by big names all the time. Like to name one: adobe acrobat is… an absolute hot pile of garbage. Basically any browser offers a MUCH better pdf reader. I don’t understand how the paid version of a product that has only the job of processing PDFs is so bad at it, and has actually regressed over time. And the PDF editing features are also terrible. I don’t know what that program even does well anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?

#80

Post by GuB-42 »

I didn't notice that.

Some software got buggier. Other software improved. I didn't really notice a pattern in the recent months. Microsoft is doing quite bad, and they make a lot of software many people use on a day to day basis, so maybe there is that.

Often, I get this sentiment when my hardware gets old. Software progressively bloats, but with new, powerful hardware, there is enough margin not to notice it, but eventually, you will, and then they will stop active support. At that point, you may blame the latest release, but it is more of a continuous process. And if, by coincidence, some heavily used software is becoming troublesome for other reasons, it definitely feels like everything goes wrong.

And then we find something to blame. Today, it is AI slop, and it certainly the cause of some software becoming shitty, but I didn't notice a global trend yet. Maybe there is, but we would need quite a study to be sure, I don't even know where to start, so much potential for bias.

Post reply on HN