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Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

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Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#21
post #16

Extended pool of engineers, as the field has grown, has diluted the quality of software. Post "Social Network" (the movie), and the economic downturn of 2008-2012 there is a new generation of engineers that started programming/entered the field because that's where the money is.... There is also proliferation of the code-academies, who often encourage trainees to create a 'github portfolio', often with low quality li…

Also all the bad pre-2001 programmers have come back and instantly jumped into tech lead and CTO positions.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#22
post #12

I don't think it's the code necessarily. It's the feature creep. It used to be that we just supported monitors - now it's touchscreens, tablets, watches, keyboards, mouse. It's LCD screens, plasma, TV, and so on. I find that code become exponentially more costly the more features you add in, because of the number of architectural layers you have to add on. And if you haven't planned for that, well, now you have to de…

Interesting that you should mention device support as a cause of more complex code, as the best way to support the devices you list is generally to use LESS code. Bare HTML is supported by pretty much everything...

But for some reason it's not cool to use HTML. We throw on megabytes of code just to bypass the page reload so that we can better control the user experience. This is why we end up with complex and bloated libraries like React and end up with a frontend and backend state that have to be kept in sync.

I wish we went back plain HTML, especially for sites that don't need to be dynamic.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#23
Maybe the quality is still the same, and your skills improved? Sounds like 10 years ago you blamed yourself when something went wrong, and now you can see when it's the library that's broken. 10 years ago you may have not been able to spot defects, but now you can.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#24
Maybe you've become a better coder and now the "average code" has dropped in your estimation. There are a multitude of potential explanations, and anecdotes from people will not reveal the answer to your question.

My small amount of experience has shown that people are astoundingly bad at intuiting generational change in crime, capability, and morality.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#25
post #11

I also find that this varies by the ecosystem. In PHP I would not assume that an external dependency is without flaws. In fact, I'd assume that it's mostly buggy simply due to the lack of a type system, but fine if I navigate the happy path. In Haskell I would assume that I'm using the library in a wrong way. In Haskell I also find that I can categorize libraries by quality and that, in the most cases, I'm not runnin…

In case OP or anyone else is interested: PHP lacks strict typing (by default). For older applications I agree with you, but in the last few versions it's been a lot better. Depending on your framework or tools, you can customise file templates and add strict typing to each file, i.e. Laravel's `php artisan make:xxx` can now always have declare(strict_types=1); . Of course you can't assume that for external packages, but it's highly recommended.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#26
Here are some quotes of people complaining about "youngsters these days".

1. The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.

2. The children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers

3. I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint

#1 was written in the 13th century, #2 in the 5th century BC and #3 in the 8th century BC. Old people always think young people are worse than ever.

I say this not to invalidate your feelings of frustration with how people are coding these days compared to the good old days. But ask yourself if your skills haven't improved in that time. Bugs that you would miss 10 years ago are now obvious to you. Also, there's just a lot more code out there than there used to be, judging by number of repos. The friction to put something into a public repository is lower than ever. That gets us some gems that might not have existed otherwise, but also some turds.

Rest assured that 10 years from now, devs will be talking about the good old days of today and how much better it was compared to 2030.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#27
My experience is similar. I seem to stumble upon two different types of libraries:

- One that is so specifically designed to fix the authors' original problem. It is implemented in such a way that it doesn't cover a lot of use cases.

- One that is actually designed to be a general purpose library and to be used everywhere; but because of this there is a lot of feature creep and very complicated interfaces.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#28
post #26

Here are some quotes of people complaining about "youngsters these days". 1. The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unlady…

This is a very generic ramble to (potentially) derail the thread with. I'm more interested in people's answers to the actual question the OP asked.

Re: Ask HN: Is average code getting worse?

#29
Yes. Average code quality is objectively worse than it used to be, and there is an objective reason why.

The barrier to entry is much lower.

In 1995, getting a C++ program compiled, tested, shrink wrapped and shipped (in waterfall fashion) required a lot more work. The "survivor" software you bought on your floppy disk or CD-ROM at the store meant it was high enough quality to jump through all those hoops. Some of those hoops were the software developers needed to know more about computers. Some were that you couldn't fix an issue after it was shipped in the wild pre-internet. Some of it was that a lot of those people had an intrinsic passion for the craft in which they weren't paid as well. They also did the work even though they were considered geeks, unlike now where a lot of "engineers" are indistinguishable from marketers and considered popular.

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