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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?

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a very odd take in the world where your device will connect to any old wi-fi.

On top of that any takeover of a device like an ISP router or BGP misrouting is now an automatic compromise.

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

#392
If coding is a solved problem, where are all the high quality, open source PRs is what I want to know. Where's the flood of improvements for Curl? SFML? SDL? Godot? Linux? ImGui? VLC? Firefox? GNU tools? Rust? GCC? LLVM? Why can I find *no* evidence of this?

If you look at the open source space and review the contribution of AI in it, you'd think that AI is barely able to create functional code and the people who peddle it are solely slop authors. More than that, you might think it barely exists, because there's simply vanishingly few PRs landing which are AI generated. It seems in open source projects, for some reason, AI is barely able to produce any useful code at all

But apparently for closed source proprietary code its like magic and you don't need to write any code anymore and it is a solved problem. Mhm. Totally willing to believe that

My suspicion is that a lot of proprietary software engineering has become purely performative. It no longer matters if the resulting product works, or has any quality, because its not about that. The system is being burnt down to extract wealth from it instead, as we create the illusion of software development as these companies are asset stripped. Line Must Go Up. There's no simply incentive to make a real product anymore, when the valuation of our economy and management compensation is built solely on hype instead of results

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

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only software I've been excited about an update for in years has been games, that seems like the only category where devs actually add features people are excited about. For example, the latest KCD2 patch added a fun but brief new quest [0]. Not universal though. Besides your example, even for single player games patches can be basically malicious. I've had Fallout 4 locked on updates for like 3 years at this poi…

I really look forward to new Fedora releases.

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

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anecdotes like yours are why I'll probably remain on Windows for the foreseeable future. Games on Windows just work . It's not even a question. I don't remember the last time I had to fiddle around to get a game to work properly, but it was probably 20+ years ago. On Linux? Might as well play a slot machine. You might score a jackpot and the game has a native Linux port that works flawlessly out of the box. You might…

> Games on Windows just work.

Counterexample: I was locked out of Destiny 2 a couple times as they shipped new updates that simply didn't run on Windows 7, even as they continued to claim it was supported.

I don't mean subtle bugs either, I mean stuff like an immediate error on startup for a "missing" DLL, which persisted for weeks.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Kubuntu treats you like an adult and will tell you what's going on This means so much to me in the modern era. Contrast with the SaaS approach that's also been leaking into Electron apps, etc: - "Something went wrong" - "It's not you - it's us :-(" - "An error occurred" - "Uh-oh..." - "Too many penguins are in the defrobulator" [or whatever "lol so random" 2010 corporate mascot in-joke is applicable] People used to…

"Can websites please stop the trend of giving error messages that are like "OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!" And just give me a fucking error code so I can try and fix it"[0]

[0] https://x.com/cherrikissu/status/972524442600558594

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

#396

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…

But maybe that’s bad? Maybe keeping everyone just on the verge of leaving or getting hurt isn’t a good place for society to settle?

Is HR aware you hold these dissident opinions?

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

#397

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…

There are good PMs out there watching in horror as their peers make changes and features that are obviously doomed (to anybody with a functional brain). I also write as much code as the median engineer on my team (skews junior). Please don't write off the entire profession based on many (most?) being awful - if you work with a good PM some day I promise you will find there is an important point to the job.

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only software I've been excited about an update for in years has been games, that seems like the only category where devs actually add features people are excited about. For example, the latest KCD2 patch added a fun but brief new quest [0]. Not universal though. Besides your example, even for single player games patches can be basically malicious. I've had Fallout 4 locked on updates for like 3 years at this poi…

I really look forward to new Fedora releases.

I really look forward to Pop OS updates... but it's because they broke a bunch of stuff and stripped most apps down to their basics.

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

#399

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…

> 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.

I feel like there's this one random comment on HN that should be adopted on its merits alone, but everyone will ignore for no good reason. This will never happen because entrenchment and bureaucracy will strangle every product organization and every organizational reboot attempt.

It's probably the right solution, but the resistance built into organizations assembled by bad decision makers cannot be overcome. Maybe the best you can do is try to find a legal way to spin-off a competitor with a truly fresh start.

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

#400

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…

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