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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?

#551

Post by jayd16 »

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…

If software is solved then the power users can be in charge because there is no technical moat. Competition should thrive as imposter-ware flounders, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

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

#553

Post by tgv »

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…

I see where you're coming from, but my experience says (TLDR): lack of dogfooding.

In my current job, I'm building a system which has replaced the "SaaS" we used before. Not only was it fairly expensive, and sluggish, it was also not good, and in some parts even bad. And that fits a pattern I've seen before: that SaaS product, a survey platform, was built by a company that builds software, but doesn't use it. Engineers nor management are involved in making actual surveys and processing the results at any scale. The result is a system that requires bizarre hacks to make the system do what you need it to do. OTOH, I work right next to the people that use my software, and some of which have a lot of experience. We're small, independent, there's not much management involved, and everyone is aligned, and we all talk to each other.

Not knowing what your customers actually need is one of the big faults of software engineering, and in large companies, architects, engineers, and management can be quite far removed from their customers' experience.

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

#554

Post by bloomca »

throwup238 wrote: post #442
Gigachad wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devs and power users create something like libreoffice or thunderbird. They are incredibly resistant to any change for any reason and hang on to what they already know rather than what’s best. The reality is most people actually like the stuff Apple and such are putting out and like modern UX more. The only bad stuff is deliberate enshitification which is pushed by financial incentives rather than product people bein…

The financial incentives draw incompetent people. It’s happened with finance, law, management consulting, and now software.

But software has been lucrative for very long time at this point. Can you say that the quality went downhill more than a decade ago?

I personally do agree that when I see an update I feel something between annoyance or dread (what is broken this time?).

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

#555

Post by chanux »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #330

LLMs can't parse the entire codebase at once, understand it, and then make decisions based on that understanding. The hard part of programming almost is never how ONE function or ONE class works. It's how they all interact in a much larger picture. You can try to mitigate this, but it's a pretty fundamental concept that software is big and just too large for an LLM context window. Until that's solved, coding has not…

Obligatory reference to "Software as theory building" by Peter Naur.

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

#556

Post by mobelkh »

Grombobulous wrote: post #485
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…

The funny thing is that there’s a relatively high amount of hype this year around iOS and macOS being a stability and performance release with very few features, on purpose. Look up some beta impressions or try the public beta yourself. Apps launch faster and a whole bunch of random stuff is fixed and smoothed out. So not only are we getting a really great performance and stability release in the height of the AI era…

> disproving this “AI isn’t making software better” claim

one company deciding a feature freeze is not disapproving anything, in fact, it means things have gotten so bad, apple who used to have higher standards for their releases, had to pull the brakes and fix their shit

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

#557

Post by Y-bar »

pixl97 wrote: post #418
Y-bar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn’t ask for a single of these ”features” for example: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphfed2c4091/io...

If our entire profession is unable to provide a better quality over the long term maybe it is time to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves ”wtf are we doing”? We are constantly churning out worse and worse products.

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

#558

Post by chanux »

ricardobayes wrote: post #139

To add to author's point, I did work at an organization that decided to focus on bugfixing for a full release cycle, and the PM was sacked after that.

I was hoping you saw the nice end of it, with a feint smile on my face.

Very rude ending!

PS: I laughed outside. Cried inside.

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

#559

Post by madduci »

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 real.answer is that people stopped making things with care and genuine interest.

Everything should be delivered in the fastest way possible, in the shortest time possible, on the tightest budget possible.

This is a recipe for creating a mess, in which AI has now pushed the limits and we are seeing how failure is now per-default embedded and shipped to users, who are now beta-testing products continuously.

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

#560

Post by wodenokoto »

spike021 wrote: post #481
ghusto wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, Apple has designed for the happy flow, and nothing else. Mac apps have never opened instantly, this is nothing new.

same with iphones and switching between cellular and wifi connections. I'll be walking away from or toward my home or my office and there's just barely a wifi connection, but hardly enough for any requests or responses to even make it through, yet Apple never allows the phone to fall back toward the cellular connection. I can't believe in all these years they haven't implemented a dual setup where they connect the wi…

> Apple never allows the phone to fall back toward the cellular connection.

Maybe you’ve turned off WiFi Assist? It’s an option to allow mobile data to supplement WiFi.

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