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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?

#411

Post by slopinthebag »

afavour wrote: post #408
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…

> The solution is to gut your product org, replace management with leading engineers, and hire some of your most fanatic users. It’s not surprising that this sentiment is popular on a message board filled with engineers but I’m not so convinced by it. Nor do I think the current state of tech companies is acceptable, to be clear. But there needs to be some level of management outside of the engineers themselves. A lot…

Yeah I hate that you’re right. Blender is an example of OSS software which is actually a joy to use and they have product designers. But I think there is a massive gap between good and bad product people. No product person would be better than bad ones, but for truly great software you probably want some good ones.

That being said lots of good OSS exists purely built by engineers so I think it’s really the case that good product people help a lot and bad ones hurt a ton.

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

#412

Post by unknownfuture »

greatgib wrote: post #369
mort96 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulseaudio has been painless for like a decade and a half. Yes, it has a rough start and was probably made default in many distros before it ought to, but it's fine.

Pulse audio is ok until you plug or unplug things like earpieces and bluetooth speakers and then you want to do a videocall and random devices are the active ones. And then you find no obvious way to be able to record both input and output...

Lol because that never happens on any other OS. Plug my Mac into my dock, uses my DAC. Great. Unplug. Connect Bluetooth headphones. So far so good. Plug back into dock. Now it's... the built in audio? Huh?

I'm honestly surprised how often in Linux PA with WirePlumber just does the right thing most times, IME.

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

#413

Post by xingped »

inigyou wrote: post #383
xingped wrote: post #331

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…

Factorio or Minecraft change things every update.

I don't play those, but I know at least with games like those, where players like to play on specific versions, there's usually ways to stay on a specific version without too much hassle.

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

#414

Post by pixl97 »

nope1000 wrote: post #58

My assumption is that AI-generated code explodes the flaws in your existing codebase. If your architecture is bad or not documented, your docs are out of date or the goal of the feature request is vague, how should the AI (or even a good human developer) develop high quality software?

A lot of people miss that everything needs documented, even the things that customers don't see. I've seen a lot of things over the years that were implemented but their limitations were not documented. Tags were one thing in particular. The person that thought up the idea didn't specify out how long or how many tags should be implemented. The developer put some wildly huge field in place and didn't state what the field limitations were. So later when a few users shoved massive amounts of data in there other parts of the software that displayed information broke or had terrible performance.

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

#416

Post by jason_oster »

CivBase wrote: post #343
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #264

> If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse? Because the premise that coding has been solved is false. :-)

I'd say "coding" has been solved, but that was never the bottleneck. Coding is cheap. It has been for a long time. Ten years ago my company was outsorcing all its coding to the cheapest people they could find in India. But most of these people can't solve problems. They can't even identify problems, much less design solutions. Code is a liability. You want as little as you can to solve the problems you actually have.…

Coding is anything but cheap. You speak like someone who has completely forgotten how difficult it was to learn everything you now know by heart.

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

#417

Post by pixl97 »

lackoftactics wrote: post #188

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…

Why would there be revenue growth when AI should decrease it via competition? I think the revenue growth occurred in the past by companies like Microsoft and Google capturing huge parts of the market, and the market for profits in advertising.

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

#418

Post by pixl97 »

Y-bar wrote: post #76
gchokov wrote: post #27

It was always like this.

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…

How many more features are we asking from our software today?

I think it's a two part issue.

If you build a software with the same features as a '96 piece of software I can imagine it would be exceptional fast and stable.

I also imagine that almost no one would use it as features are what bring in the users.

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

#419

Post by baddash »

I don't get this post. It says software is getting worse, and then... gives a handful of anecdotal evidence. That could have been done at any point in the life of the software industry, including in the pre-agentic era. So the assertion behind the post doesn't really have any weight to it. Is there any actual, respectable evidence that software is actually getting worse? Also, what would worse even mean really? More buggy? Less reliable? Less creative, flexible?

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

#420

Post by zx8080 »

unknownfuture wrote: post #412
greatgib wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulse audio is ok until you plug or unplug things like earpieces and bluetooth speakers and then you want to do a videocall and random devices are the active ones. And then you find no obvious way to be able to record both input and output...

Lol because that never happens on any other OS. Plug my Mac into my dock, uses my DAC. Great. Unplug. Connect Bluetooth headphones. So far so good. Plug back into dock. Now it's... the built in audio? Huh? I'm honestly surprised how often in Linux PA with WirePlumber just does the right thing most times, IME.

MacOS is the worst. I got to reconnect my bose bluetooth headset 3-4 times every time I have a zoom call because no sound.

On contrast, my linux laptop does not have any issue with the same headset and it gets connected instantly.

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