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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?

#71

Post by eviks »

> There’s no denying that these new tools have already revolutionized how we create and use software. They have raised upper management’s expectations for team output. They may have

Expectations is neither about creation not use. "May" isn't a revolution outside of the historic calendar, so on both counts it's trivial to deny an ungrounded statement.

> So why does software keep getting worse across the board?

Because the premise on which the expectation is built is wrong?

Also plenty of the issues are prehistoric with all the past meat bag generations to blame, case in point: > Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty

So who stopped that huge fruit corpo from doing the very basics of managing user experience in the past few decades minus a few AI years?

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

#72

Post by bregma »

mrkeen wrote: post #17

I agree that software becoming worse (in some sense) but I don't blame AI. My experiences as a user haven't really changed. Streamers fail to cast to TVs. Browsers are devices which reliably and efficiently propagate red console text and 500s from companies to you. I still see bluescreens on public touchscreens. Uncle Bob nailed one reason why the industry isn't getting better: the growth of programmers is exponentia…

They made programming so simple any idiot could do it. So they do.

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

#73

Post by prmoustache »

frameset wrote: post #37

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. One of my absolute favourite features on KDE Plasma with Wayland is the global setting to control what can steal focus. It works wonderfully, and I always miss it wh…

I never understood the OSes/desktop environments that stole focus by default. So many secrets/credentials have been shared because of that. Just give me a blinking notification that the app/window is available in the notification/taskbar/appdock area ffs. Yes that is one more click/alt-tab but that is much better imho. At least ask for preference on first ever login.

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

#74

Post by markovs_gun »

hypfer wrote: post #46
rightbyte wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that fascist run FOSS projects might be working against your interest as a user. Fascist is not just a silly label. The political collapse of neoliberalism made a lot of closet fascists emerge and they seem quite common among what was earlier thought of as "techno libertarians". E.g. the VPN provider owner (forgot which) just lately. If there was too much crying wolf 15 years ago, doesn't really matte…

> One could argue that fascist run FOSS projects might be working against your interest as a user. I guess so, but that's abstract and hard to grasp for most people. "The guy has clearly lost it and thus is probably not making sensible decisions" otoh is pretty easy to understand, signals effectively the same and side-steps basically all the drama.

> "The guy has clearly lost it and thus is probably not making sensible decisions"

That isn't the problem though. Fascism isn't mental instability, it's an ideology. Someone going off the deep end and making bad decisions does so essentially at random, while someone driven by ideology messes things up in very specific ways. In the case of Fascist ideology, the specific ways they ruin things are specifically intended to harm specific groups of people, so I think the distinction matters. Writing it off as the guy having "lost it" obscures the specific goal he is working towards.

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

#75

Post by eviks »

frameset wrote: post #37

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. One of my absolute favourite features on KDE Plasma with Wayland is the global setting to control what can steal focus. It works wonderfully, and I always miss it wh…

How would that global app ban help? You do want the application to steal focus when necessary. It's just in this case the user has made the decision to not wait for startup and switch to another app. Aggravating step - he was typing.

Is this workflow part of the Kwin settings? It's not interrupting typing part of the settings?

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

#76

Post by Y-bar »

gchokov wrote: post #27

It was always like this.

I think the flaws have moved. I remember Mac OS 7-8-9 (”Classic”) fondly and the suite of software I regularly used there.

It crashed, and crashed hard, a few times per week. That never happens today, maybe at most once a month.

However, what has changed in terms of quality is that there are 1000% more smaller bugs. I never felt that small annoyances or problems were even noticeable or even existent back then. Every feature seemed to actually work. Yet just so far today I have encountered over a dozen small problems in my operating system and apps I use.

It’s exhausting in a different way. Two decades ago I felt ”safe” from problems by frequently saving my files. Today I dread having to navigate a UI that keeps giving me a thousand paper cuts of small bugs.

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

#77

Post by spwa4 »

benfortuna wrote: post #63
fhd2 wrote: 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…

I think it's fair to say that AI amplifies our abilities, but it needs to be in the hands of people that know what they are doing. If developers are producing garbage to begin with, chances are they still produce garbage just at an accelerated rate.

But that defeats the whole point of AI, as far as business is concerned. You could describe most programming languages as working the same way and having the same limitation. If this is true, then AI will simply mean you'll have very highly paid AI experts (who know how to do X with AI) that you absolutely need to hire or your competition will run at 10x your speed.

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

#78

Post by markovs_gun »

danlitt wrote: post #39
Kiro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad advice considering the success Omarchy has had in marketing it. Whatever they're doing other distros should take note.

Is there any evidence of people actually using it?

Yeah I switched to Linux full time at home last year and never even heard of this distro in doing any research about it.

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

#79

Post by eviks »

fer wrote: post #34

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. I still don't understand how a full focus stealability debounce is not the norm. If I am in the middle of writing, or interacting with one UI bit in any way, no othe…

> annoying popup if you want, make angry computer noises, flash icons, I don't care.

I do, this is also pretty bad. User focus is more valuable than that

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

#80

Post by frameset »

eviks wrote: post #75
frameset wrote: post #37

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. One of my absolute favourite features on KDE Plasma with Wayland is the global setting to control what can steal focus. It works wonderfully, and I always miss it wh…

How would that global app ban help? You do want the application to steal focus when necessary. It's just in this case the user has made the decision to not wait for startup and switch to another app. Aggravating step - he was typing. Is this workflow part of the Kwin settings? It's not interrupting typing part of the settings?

> How would that global app ban help? You do want the application to steal focus when necessary

Maybe you do. I don't. With this setting we can both be hapopy.

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