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

181–190 of 719 posts

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

#181

Post by j_bum »

schneems wrote: post #175

Reddit on iOS safari has been getting incrementally, nearly unusable worse. It had some sharp edges before but it seems they are moving faster now with the same or greater defect rate and shit is getting bad: - URLs commonly auto-link to the things behind them, even including spaces and words. - Pinch to zoom on the homepage causes the page to reload. Forcing you to lose your place/content. - I sometimes cannot click…

My conspiracy theory is that Reddit intentionally makes the iOS Safari experience awful to drive people to download the app.

I’m sure it works.

But for me, it drove me to stop using Reddit on my phone.

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

#182

Post by inigyou »

eviks wrote: post #98
jagged-chisel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any app should be ready to accept focus. It should never steal focus. When I start an app, and wait for it to launch, I am attempting to give it focus. I can withdraw that intent at any time by doing something else (e.g. switching apps) and the launching app should finish launching and wait in the background.

Your specific example is just repeating what I've said, but your generic point is wrong: let's say you have an important task in an app with unavoidable interruptions, during which you switch to your browser to mindlessly scroll. You most likely want to return to the main task as soon as possible because that scrolling is just a time filler because you can't do anything productive. So you don't need any notification…

Windows XP has a solution to this: the taskbar flash

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

#183

Post by ajmurmann »

schneems wrote: post #175

Reddit on iOS safari has been getting incrementally, nearly unusable worse. It had some sharp edges before but it seems they are moving faster now with the same or greater defect rate and shit is getting bad: - URLs commonly auto-link to the things behind them, even including spaces and words. - Pinch to zoom on the homepage causes the page to reload. Forcing you to lose your place/content. - I sometimes cannot click…

With Reddit I think it's on purpose. They want to drive users to the mobile app. Maybe they aren't introducing bugs on purpose but not addressing them isn't a accident.

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

#185

Post by inigyou »

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…

One thing you can do to fight back is show up at their branches with complaints. You can engineer this intentionally. Have a bank that doesn't support Graphene? Show up with your Graphene phone and be like "it says my phone isn't allowed. Fix this or I'm closing my account" and there's a 50% chance they will turn off phone hardware attestation for your account or give you a physical 2FA token and if they don't it will show up in their metrics.

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

#186

Post by inigyou »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #83
Proofread0592 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Take a look at consumer cellular. I would say it’s drastically cheaper than verizon, at&t, or t-mobile, but the customer support is better than all 3.

Ting also has (had?) excellent customer service. Call the 800 number and the first thing you hear is “hello” from an actual human who has the ability to help you. They also didn’t charge a lot, which makes me think great customer service is a choice.

The relevant mindset is "we can shrink our way to growth". Managers think by cutting employees and roles the company will get bigger. It won't.

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

#187

Post by pier25 »

ghusto wrote: post #178

> Software may have been better back in the day, but that was mainly because it was much simpler. ... The bar for “user experience” has kept rising, but everything has become increasingly fragile. It was simpler, better, more stable, _and_ had better UX. Complexity does not equal quality. In fact, it usually points to poor design. Programs used to be seen as utilities, which enabled the same kind of mentality you hav…

> It was simpler, better, more stable, _and_ had better UX.

It had less features too.

Now, I do agree doing more doesn't mean that something is necessarily better... but I think the UX difficulty increases exponentially as more features are added.

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

#188

Post by lackoftactics »

rant first: oh, I recently heard about you from a friend working in a company after I mentioned that I also got into photography. Nice work on pixelpeeper.com

to the article: Yeah, it's different world out there. We need to filter ideas instead of focusing on more features, as lack of staggering revenue growth suggests it might be that more doesn't equal better. The stability of apps is getting worse lately. I couldn't pair my sony camera and it was stuck on pairing screen :(

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

#189

Post by inigyou »

dwedge wrote: post #45
iLoveOncall wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Last year I bought a book from Amazon for over $100 and they sent the wrong book. I contacted Amazon support, they said they will refund it, I don't need to send it back (throw it away if I want), and also give me a $20 credit for the inconvenience. A month later, no refund. I contacted them again, they said unless the book is sent back, no refund. I told them about the previous conversation and they said that the CS…

FYI you can sue them in small claims for this. This is one of the languages that companies really listen to. You would have to have actually thrown the book out in good faith, though, or commit perjury. Remember the airline LLM support bot and the bereavement fare?
Post reply on HN