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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?

#151

Post by Hugsbox »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #30
fhd2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Used to work at an AppleCare call centre. Apple has extremely high standards for their support advisors. I'm aware that the genius bars are terrible, though.

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

#154

Post by steveBK123 »

Agree with all of these gripes, they are everywhere and none of this golden age of SWE productivity seems to be making products better.

My other biggest pet peeve in this space is the annual iOS updates where Apple arbitrarily moves buttons back and forth between top and bottom of screen.

They really like to screw around with the photos app such that "show me my photos most recently taken in time order" is somehow different set of taps year to year.

You see flavors of this in most other apps/websites.

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

#155

Post by ToucanLoucan »

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…

I actually had to backpedal on my gaming PC from Kubuntu recently, I'm sad to say. The support for the RTX 5080 is just too rough. Every game install was chased by an hour of debugging with Claude to figure out which version of proton to use, which launch arguments to use, which between-system-and-gpu shim profile to use.

I grant: The process is much more enjoyable than doing similar things on Windows. Kubuntu treats you like an adult and will tell you what's going on, and being able to copy the sometimes esoteric nonsense in those logs into Claude and get actionable information while not remotely understanding the underlying tech is fan-bloody-tastic.

That said it was death by a thousand cuts. Some friends I hadn't heard from in awhile asked if I wanted to get on Warhammer Space Marine 2 and luckily, I had it installed! ... and was able to play after a mere 35 minutes listening to other people have fun on the call, while I was trying to figure out why the game would only launch to a black screen.

So yeah, I wussed out and went back to Windows. I'll probably try again in a few months, and hope the GPU support is better. But that's also explicitly riding on nvidia to do, and they're busy selling shovels to the AI gold-rushers.

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

#157

Post by steveBK123 »

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…

> Secondly, while I don't think there is any realistic alternative to agile development, it seems that nontechnical POs have captured the software lifecycle. 'Focus on happy path only, for the MVP' is how you build buggy software. Good developers can learn that this will guarantee the need for a rewrite in the future, but POs never will.

100% agreed on ProductManager-ism/MVPitis is a cause of so much of this.

One can "do agile" a bit less literally & stupidly.

For a lot of software infra or even user facing apps, you really can plan out more than a sprint or two. This might be the MVP, but there is prior art in the space / competitors / devs with experience on the team. You probably should think about what the app should be capable of 3/6/12 months out.

When you follow a GPS for directions, you generally take a look at the overview first, make sure it's not driving into a lake or taking you to a similar address in another state. My car even shows me the next 3 steps on the path as I go, I like that.

Agile should not mean blindly "take 1 step and only then contemplate what step 2 to take once you complete that 1 step". And yet that is how MANY shops implement it in practice.

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

#158

Post by SoftTalker »

cmiller1 wrote: post #143
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 think this is less a "macOS lacks the feature to prevent focus stealing" and more they never even imagined the scenario where it takes time for the app to open. Instead of even considering that a user may add inputs while waiting for launch, potentially signaling that they are no longer requesting focus from the program they clicked on, they simply designed for the optimistic case where there never IS time for the…

In my experience (admittedly a bit dated now) Mac apps always take a few "bounces" to launch and be ready. There are a lot of nice things about MacOS but snappy application launches isn't one that stands out for me.

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

#159

Post by fhd2 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #30
fhd2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never went into an Apple store, but the phone support issues I had (even a pretty complex bug on their end that locked me out of my account) where handled swiftly and well, and I spoke to humans that seemed to know what they're doing. I could say this should be the default and I shouldn't be impressed by it, but unfortunately it's top 10% based on my experience. I'm in Europe though, maybe they do things differently here.

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

#160

Post by SoftTalker »

cmiller1 wrote: post #150
zkmon wrote: post #149

> My banking app requires, on average, three FaceID logins before the 3D Secure confirmation view appears. That's a different, equally big problem. Security mafia at every company will continue to rule everything and everyone. They do not have goals or constraints that are tied to productivity and user experience. We are heading to a situation where the security teams are causing much more damage compared to the poss…

Perhaps its a slight overcorrection but it's better than the past where an online shop I gave my credit card info to would reply to a forgotten password request with an e-mail with my password in it in plaintext. Security used to be awful and people suffered because of it.

I wonder how many accounts have ever actually been compromised by a MITM reading passwords out of plaintext emails. I would guess it's very, very small.
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