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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?

#381

Post by foldshift »

bodge5000 wrote: post #322
gyomu wrote: post #291

You can build software fast, but the more time you take the more you can be confident about it being correct. This was true already before AI code generation, but AI code generation means the definition of “fast” has shifted like crazy. An experienced engineer can now build in an hour what would have taken them a week. But it (right now) does nothing for the confidence about being correct - you still have to put in t…

> An experienced engineer can now build in an hour what would have taken them a week. From what I've seen, I don't think so if we're talking about like-for-like quality. Maybe as an absolute best case scenario, but more typically it's more like you can build in an hour with AI whereas without AI it might take you 2 or 3. Even thats highly task dependant, and doesn't scale as you'd expect (eg 1 hour == 2 hours, but 1…

I think I can say I got some 10x speedup with the recent, more powerful models (from Opus 4.5 on). But then again, I am just building CRUD websites, although sometimes there are some challenging tasks like some fancy graphs/plots to show, and some API integration in the backend, etc... but these are the use cases that models are really good at. I have 0 worries about scaling: my apps are internal, so you can think of 10-15 concurrent users at most, usually 5 or less, and 100 or so users in total, which eliminates the whole class of complicated scaling problems. 99% of the devs are probably on the same boat: our day-to-day problems are not complicated, dont need any deep algorithm or data structures knowledge, and models speed up this type of work a lot. Of course, they get very limited on complicated problems

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

#382

Post by inigyou »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #288

I think the truth is whether people want to admit it or not is that coding has not been solved, and producing good software is really not any easier. Making legacy code however is now very fast. So fast you can practically ship it straight to production.

All code is legacy code a millisecond after you write it.

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

#383

Post by inigyou »

xingped wrote: post #331
mancerayder wrote: post #277

> We’ve reached a point where an update to macOS — or to any app I rely on, really — is a source of dread rather than excitement. I now expect the new version to be worse. I actually relate to that. It used to be cool and exciting to update to see what new things are coming for free. I was just looking up what Fedora Workstation 45 might bring. Updates on phones, TV's, cars and non-Linux operating systems on PC's/lap…

Yep, this 100%. When I see a "pending update" notification or icon somewhere, the first thing I think is "I don't want to update, they're just going to break something new". I _hate_ updates now. Doesn't matter what software it is, with the small exception of video games. (Except Dead By Daylight. Behavior, the devs, are the most hilariously incompetent devs on the planet, but at least their incompetence is confined…

Factorio or Minecraft change things every update.

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

#385

Post by udbhavs »

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…

For some reason I have to deal with the opposite problem and have to click twice on a new window to get keyboard focus. Many times I'll switch windows (eg. from Messages to the browser), start typing and accidentally end up sending someone a message instead- even though the messages tab is completely out of view.

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

#386

Post by pixl97 »

mmmasterggg wrote: post #341

For me, the problem was never the writing of the code. Building something takes care and rigor. Software development got where it is through years of accumulated practice: habits first, then safeguards, then structures that had actually been proven. Now people set the code aside and just describe their problem, and they have no real sense of what comes back, because nobody can review output produced that fast. Nobody…

If furniture was still built like it was in the past you'd have about 2 pieces of it unless you were fabulously wealthy.

This is pretty true for software, how much have you actually paid for recently? FOSS isn't free either, a massive amount of time and coordination is required to make good software there too and few are willing to give it.

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

#388

Post by alphazard »

The answer, of course, is that the taste-making apparatus inside the typical tech company is now entirely imposters (non-technical, non-power-users), who continue to LARP as visionaries.

The people who notice broken or degraded behavior (devs and power users) and conceive of good designs are not in charge of what goes into the product. So you shouldn't expect it to get better, only to continuously change so that the imposters can point to a difference that they were responsible for, knowing that upper management also has no idea whether that difference was actually an improvement.

The solution is to gut your product org, replace management with leading engineers, and hire some of your most fanatic users. They don't need to do anything other than give their opinions, and use the product every day. Put them in a room with your top engineers, and the software will mysteriously get better.

All of this was obvious decades ago, but now everyone wants to have a do-nothing job at a tech company, and to help their friends get one too. The result is imposters everywhere; "imposter syndrome" was brought into the vernacular to normalize a lack of expertise. "No one knows what they are doing, it's okay to not know how to do your job". That's what your (product) manager tells themself in the mirror each morning. Turns out: skill predicts quality, and an org ships quality proportional to the skill of the decision makers.

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

#389

Post by Decabytes »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #327
Decabytes wrote: post #319

Software quality is tied to the market incentives and always has been. AI isn’t going to make someone care about writing robust software and that is why we don’t see better software all of a sudden. The market doesn’t rewards apps that don’t break on every update, it doesn’t reward cobbling together multiple independent solutions, as opposed to using Microsoft as a one stop shop. If people could have gotten away with…

So what's our (literal or metaphorical) breaking point here? How much more does things need to break before people just say "enough" and stop consuming into the declining quality?

I feel like the only real answer is "we just don't know". But in an attempt to actually answer this, I think the breaking point are different for different groups of people.

If you are struggling to pay the bills, you probably could care less about software's 'decline', you're just trying to survive. Maybe if something catastrophic happened it would be enough to put you at that limit, but software could stand to get much worse before then.

If you are forced to interact with technology a lot everyday, then what might be a paper cut for someone every once in a while, could be literally hundreds a day for you. In that case you are probably very near or at that threshold already.

As a society, I don't think we would see cracks until we start to see multiple community scale disasters related to poor software, or small disasters in highly visible areas like healthcare, planes, etc.

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

#390

Post by amoorthy »

alphazard wrote: post #388

The answer, of course, is that the taste-making apparatus inside the typical tech company is now entirely imposters (non-technical, non-power-users), who continue to LARP as visionaries. The people who notice broken or degraded behavior (devs and power users) and conceive of good designs are not in charge of what goes into the product. So you shouldn't expect it to get better, only to continuously change so that the…

Mostly agree and would add that product managers should be responsible for the commercial success of their products. That means spending more time deciding what market to be in, how to differentiate, how to price, how to drive adoption.

For the most part these are not strengths for devs and power users.

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