If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse? • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by mort96 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 11:56 AM UTC

greatgib wrote: post #596

unknownfuture wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Obviously Mac is terrible, as a Linux user I would clearly not use it as a baseline of how it should work.

The point is it's a difficult problem which nobody has solved perfectly. ALSA was certainly not better.

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

#612

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:28 PM UTC

Y-bar wrote: post #557

pixl97 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, you're the only person who buys software on this planet...

The software world has little to do with what software gets built, instead focus on the capital industry and you'll find your answers.

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

#613

Post by inigyou » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:43 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #600

charcircuit wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TNT duping is a classic example of how players will optimize the fun out of the game if you give them a chance. Your claim that people won't accidentally run into is not true as it only takes one YouTube tutorial to discover it. Many popular farm designs rely on it so it is not hard to stumble upon it. Remember this is a game where people had to use third party sites to figure out how to discover how to craft anythin…

Tbh I think Minecraft players enjoy creating item farms. It’s just part of the game progression at this point. Meanwhile some non bugged workflows like breaking and replacing the lectern a million times to get the right trade exist because the enchanting table is so horribly broken no one would use it.

When I bought Minecraft, most things weren't renewable. Now, late-game players don't even have to go mining. Or craft that much.

The enchanting table used to be a rare reward. You had to get to level 50 and roll the dice once. You get a random upgrade to one item and that's it, you're stuck with it. It was gambling. Now the cost is trivial after several reductions, and people minmax their enchantments, and Repair means you never have to re-roll, and you can get all your enchantments anyway from villagers if you do a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. That's an accidental game that overtook the actual game, and it seems like not a very good one.

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

#614

Post by BirAdam » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:49 PM UTC

I see all these comments about Linux not having this issue, but Linux has a similar issue. Canonical’s uutils being forced before being ready, Wayland adoption initially before it was ready, KDE4, GNOME3, PulseAudio, Avahi, Bluetooth support, etc. Linux systems do tend to get better overtime, but Linux systems also tend to release without sufficient testing. So, while you can expect things to be great after several patch releases, everything may break initially.

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

#615

Post by xorcist » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

einsteinx2 wrote: post #373

xorcist wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or ever. If we want to some colleague to tell us what is good code and what isn't, can we please pick someone who at least once demonstratably delivered good software? Bonus points if it was a group effort, and if it was on time. Common for all these "industry leaders" is that they all write books and give speeches. I'd rather listen to someone who designed successful software such as git or OpenSSH than someone who…

> Did we learn nothing from the TDD nonsense in the 00s? I was never a fan of TDD, but ironically I think it may finally be a good development strategy now with agentic/LLM coding since LLMs do so much better they they have a verifiable goal like passing tests.

How does that work? Does one agent write the tests from spec, and then another agent is told "make tests pass", or do you write the tests manually?

It does sound like a possible way to parallelize agentic work, but I'd be surprised if the results are better than a non-TDD approach where the agent would write both tests and code from spec.

I would expect the agent to suffer the same problems humans do with TDD, namely that it is hard or impossible to properly model data ("understand the problem") from tests alone. And if we are to believe Frederick Brooks, as I think we should, a good data model is imperative to good code. That is why TDD failed in the real world, and that problem is excarbated with agentic coding.

It is time we as an engineering discipline sober up about which methodologies work in the real world after decades of empirical data. Name the ten most successful software projects right in front of you now, and I bet that exactly none of them were designed from tests. One would expect at least one, from decades of best selling books on the subject.

In fact, it is high time to put the OOP paradigm under scrutiny and see which promises were delivered on and which weren't. Apart from a few functional languages, mainstream language design got stale for a long time until we finally got Rust and Go which broke with the strict paradigm.

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

#616

Post by freddealmeida » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

coding is not understanding, nor is it architecture. And debt is always there. No matter who writes it. But I think it can be better.

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

#617

Post by ruicraveiro » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

While I agree with a big part of the article, I need to pick on this sentence:

"They may have upgraded the average skill set of software teams in a way we have not seen before."

Well, no, not really. On one hand, it is true that AI makes it easier for experienced software developers to find information outside their existing knowledge boundaries. (i.e. when I need to use a language I've used before, but am not so proficient, it is faster with AI to get started). At the same time, it creates an apparent upgraded skill set. But, on the other hand, the more we rely on AI, and worse, the more we rely on AI and only on AI, the less skills we end having ourselves (we become skill renters, not skill owners). By this, we risk getting to the point where we don't really understand the code that AI generated. This is a very dangerous aspect and it might be a contributing fact to the lack of quality the author diagnosed.

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

#618

Post by chongli » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

customguy wrote: post #546

chongli wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soak it in nitric and sulfuric acid, let it dry, then light it on fire?

A riddle is not a physical thing but okay, let's say you want to destroy an instance of a riddle that is in a book: how do you know it's in that book without looking, and therefore copying the riddle into your own mind? This is known as the Pink Streisand Paradox.

Your comment said puzzle. I usually think of those things as made of cardboard or wood (really fancy ones), i.e. jigsaw puzzles. Since they're made of cellulose, you can turn them into nitrocellulose and then burn them very quickly!

I do love the Pink Streisand Paradox though. I think the solution involves technology: you build a riddle-recognizer that scans the book for you and tells you whether or not the riddle is present, without telling you the words of the riddle.

But that further raises the question: how do you know it's the riddle you're looking for? How do you know what riddle you're looking for if you don't know the riddle itself?

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

#619

Post by bee_rider » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #608

bee_rider wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think games are the exception because they are * relatively small purchases * paid for directly by the user * expected to be enjoyable Most other software fails at least one of those tests, reducing the ability to shop around and make an informed decision.

> * paid for directly by the user hahahahah. Games are steering further and further to this not being true. Where each player explicitly doesn't pay for it, and instead they contain an increasing series of dark patterns in order to steer players to fleece their money in a series of microtransactions.

You have a good point, there are some games with terrible business models too. I just don’t play them, haha.

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

#620

Post by ajnin » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

readread wrote: post #406

overfeed wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no coincidence that PulseAudio and Gnome are Pottering-authored/Pottering-adjacent software.

Anything with the Red Hat stink, these days. Which, yeah, a lot of that’s Poettering. If they haven’t been executing a plan to make it extremely painful to maintain a distro that differs significantly from whatever Red Hat’s preferences and ways of operating are (so, making it harder to justify anything but “screw it, we’ll just use red hat, everyone else is just the same thing but with less ability to steer the dire…

Latest venture of the ilk behind all that : device attestation for Linux (Amutable). Yes, they clearly have an agenda and are being quite successful at pushing it.