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

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

ptrchm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 719 posts

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

#121

Post by tgv »

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…

Curiously, macOS is capable of putting a recently opened app out of focus. It happens consistently on my laptop when I haven't rebooted it for a while. It may be a bug, but it could be a feature, especially when it's conditioned by the user clicking in another window before launch completion.

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

#122

Post by Y-bar »

rightbyte wrote: post #84
Y-bar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think it fair to compare cooperative multitasking OSs to OSs that requires virtual memory chips on a software quality basis.

It makes a difference to my experience as an end user and that is what I am talking about.

I work in development and programming and with all the modern tools and testing frameworks and QA engineers and analytics and modern language we seem to only have achieved less crashes and more non-crashing bugs. It annoys me and I am a bit ashamed at my own profession.

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

#123

Post by DicIfTEx »

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…

A fantastic feature, but unfortunately currently broken (as in over- rather than under-zealous) for prevention levels other than 'Low': https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509990

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

#124

Post by localhost3000 »

> This quarter, we won’t be releasing any new features, and we have no plans to redesign anything — we will exclusively focus on fixing bugs.

IME this happens more often than people think. If you’re leading a team part of your job is to manage the expectations of those around you and explain your choices. If you do that well you can absolutely have quarters where you only pay down debt, it doesn’t require some huge attitude shift in the industry. Just explain why it’s the right thing and then do it.

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

#126

Post by bitmasher9 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #115
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…

Yeah the obvious answer to software getting worse is to switch to FOSS. Use Linux/KDE. It's been great for a long time and only ever gets better. It's as if Windows 7 just continued to slowly iterate and add useful polish. NixOS has a longstanding issue where library loading (and therefore program start, particularly GUI programs that load a lot) is n^2, but programs still all start in ~1 second or less on my n100 mi…

KDE has a much older and richer history than windows 7. It’s been trying to be a safe harbor for Windows users to land in Linux for a long time.

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

#127

Post by frameset »

eviks wrote: post #111
frameset wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You can set it to let apps steal the focus you want. I can set it to not allow any apps to steal focus. How are we not both satisfied?

That! I don't want apps to steal focus in some conditions. I can't set it like that because the settings are too primitive. Why would I be satisfied with a primitive binary toggle when I want workflow-dependent conditions?

Did you read the documentation I linked? There's also high/medium/low settings that use XDG signals to determine if focus should change.

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

#128

Post by Otterly99 »

I agree with the author. I think everybody has strong or at least mixed feeling agent agentic coding and to me, the argument is always focused on the product itself.

I come from sciences, where the problem of AI is more linked to AI-generated papers rather than coding. Again, the real underlying problem is the pressure to publish at all cost and the ranking grant system which rewards number of publication rather than quality.

I'm sure you could say the same of AI-generated images, sound or video used in advetising, or any field where AI generation offers a shortcut. The problem is always that you need to produce as much results as fast as possible and quality is not the objective. The problem is always the KPI.

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

#129

Post by andreimackenzie »

hibikir wrote: post #3

A lot of the product misses come from large product teams where nobody owns anything, and where there's minimal internal goal alignment. I know that, at work, what I am incentivized to do has nothing to do with what I consider the most important work I could do.... and I also know that the maze I would have to cross to be allowed to do the better work is just not worth it. The smaller the org, the better the chances…

This is spot on. Also, many orgs build to the needs of the business or whims of stakeholders rather than customer needs. Good product strategy and product discovery remain difficult despite AI.
Post reply on HN