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If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

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Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#21
Software quality has been declining for long before AI was a thing.

Microsoft didn't need AI to make windows 11 as bad as it is.

The incentives are large companies are fundamentally not in align with making high quality software people actually enjoy interacting with.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#22
post #18
post #12

Right now, the majority of companies I interact with seems to look at their now (let's assume) increased capabilities, and turns up the speed. But there's other knobs to turn up instead. Robustness, quality, user experience. Optimistically, I think we might just enter a new phase at some point, where businesses make very conscious decisions about what to invest in to differentiate. Like, everyone has support bots now…

> Where do we invest, absolutely stunning human support? That's a complete non-starter unless you're serving some extreme luxury premium market with absurd margins, and/or your customer interactions already require a lot of human involvement. So 99.9% of digital products are right out. Good human support is absurdly expensive and will easily make your product 10 times more expensive than your competitor's. But almost…

I paid less for internet in the late 90s and had a good support to call. There is no way "absurd margins" are required.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#23
post #8
post #5

Just a little gripe, but near the end of the article he links to a site for something called "Omarchy" which appears to be a Linux distribution. If you click on the link, the only information available is in the form of a video. If you're making a Linux distro, please don't do this. I will not watch your video. I was interested, and now I'm not.

Omarchy is basically just Arch with a bunch of configuration. It's not a particularly useful project, and the author is noted fascist DHH. So probably not worth your time.

I think more precise terminology would go a long way here.

What is "a fascist" (in context of being labelled that on the interwebs). That could mean a lot of things.

As a reader, you learn basically nothing about DHH other than that some people might not like him.

___

So to fix that:

DHH has always been a very opinionated guy - with not all of those being agreed on, but there being usually some kind of point to them.

Starting somewhere late-ish last year, however, he seems to have dropped deep through the alt-right pipeline and started babbling talking points basically copy-pasted as-is from other talking heads.

So, in essence, he kinda stopped being opinionated, because that would require having an own opinion, and instead started just being yet another person not doing all too well mentally on the internet.

I mean the guy suddenly started talking about "body counts". What's his age again?

__

Of course, moral outrage happened but achieved absolutely nothing, because it's not the right tool for the job here.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#24
post #18
post #12

Right now, the majority of companies I interact with seems to look at their now (let's assume) increased capabilities, and turns up the speed. But there's other knobs to turn up instead. Robustness, quality, user experience. Optimistically, I think we might just enter a new phase at some point, where businesses make very conscious decisions about what to invest in to differentiate. Like, everyone has support bots now…

> Where do we invest, absolutely stunning human support? That's a complete non-starter unless you're serving some extreme luxury premium market with absurd margins, and/or your customer interactions already require a lot of human involvement. So 99.9% of digital products are right out. Good human support is absurdly expensive and will easily make your product 10 times more expensive than your competitor's. But almost…

Apple has pretty stellar support in my experience, and while I don't buy Apple stuff for other reasons, this is a strong attractor. For B2B products/services, it can be a huge differeniator as well, in my experience. But it was really just an example, it might not be the call most companies make. Maybe most will still just invest in being faster or cutting costs. I just hope that's not how it's gonna be.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#26
post #18
post #12

Right now, the majority of companies I interact with seems to look at their now (let's assume) increased capabilities, and turns up the speed. But there's other knobs to turn up instead. Robustness, quality, user experience. Optimistically, I think we might just enter a new phase at some point, where businesses make very conscious decisions about what to invest in to differentiate. Like, everyone has support bots now…

> Where do we invest, absolutely stunning human support? That's a complete non-starter unless you're serving some extreme luxury premium market with absurd margins, and/or your customer interactions already require a lot of human involvement. So 99.9% of digital products are right out. Good human support is absurdly expensive and will easily make your product 10 times more expensive than your competitor's. But almost…

If your product MSRP goes up 10x because of a single OPEX line-item, the failure isn't the product, it's the business leaders.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#28
post #18
post #12

Right now, the majority of companies I interact with seems to look at their now (let's assume) increased capabilities, and turns up the speed. But there's other knobs to turn up instead. Robustness, quality, user experience. Optimistically, I think we might just enter a new phase at some point, where businesses make very conscious decisions about what to invest in to differentiate. Like, everyone has support bots now…

> Where do we invest, absolutely stunning human support? That's a complete non-starter unless you're serving some extreme luxury premium market with absurd margins, and/or your customer interactions already require a lot of human involvement. So 99.9% of digital products are right out. Good human support is absurdly expensive and will easily make your product 10 times more expensive than your competitor's. But almost…

The fact that I can speak to a human to refund a $2 item on Amazon proves how wrong you are.

Re: If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?

#30
post #24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do we invest, absolutely stunning human support? That's a complete non-starter unless you're serving some extreme luxury premium market with absurd margins, and/or your customer interactions already require a lot of human involvement. So 99.9% of digital products are right out. Good human support is absurdly expensive and will easily make your product 10 times more expensive than your competitor's. But almost…

Apple has pretty stellar support in my experience, and while I don't buy Apple stuff for other reasons, this is a strong attractor. For B2B products/services, it can be a huge differeniator as well, in my experience. But it was really just an example, it might not be the call most companies make. Maybe most will still just invest in being faster or cutting costs. I just hope that's not how it's gonna be.

You gotta be joking. Apple has no support at all, and if you ever go into a shop at their "GeNiUs BaR" (after booking an appointment days in advance), you will get extremely poor service and incompetent support.
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