Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

techtrenches.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 260 posts

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#211

Post by portaouflop »

swed420 wrote: post #200
singleshot_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s becoming exhausting to avoid all of these commonly used phrases! I don’t use LLMs.

> It’s becoming exhausting to avoid all of these commonly used phrases! That's not the only price society pays. It makes sense for us to develop the heuristics to detect AI, but the implication of doing so has its own cost. It started out as people avoiding the use of em-dash in order to avoid being mistaken for being AI, for example. Now in the case of OP's observation, it will pressure real humans to not use the fo…

I actually liked the em dash. But now I stopped using it. Probably will be good to use soon as AI gets trained to not use it.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#212

Post by palmotea »

hodgesrm wrote: post #157
ertgbnm wrote: post #28

Unrelated but my current AI text flag is the use of "It's not X. It's Y." It's become so repetitive recently. Examples from this post alone: 1. "This isn't about AI. The quality crisis started years before ChatGPT existed." 2. "The degradation isn't gradual—it's exponential." 3. "These aren't feature requirements. They're memory leaks that nobody bothered to fix." 4. "This wasn't sophisticated. This was Computer Scie…

It seems like everyone is getting too worked up about AI generated text. Yes, it's bad, but bad writing has existed forever. We don't see most of the older stuff because it disappears (thankfully) into oblivion and you are left with the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

> It seems like everyone is getting too worked up about AI generated text. Yes, it's bad, but bad writing has existed forever. We don't see most of the older stuff because it disappears (thankfully) into oblivion and you are left with the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

You're missing the point. In the past bad writing was just bad writing, and it was typically easy to detect. Now the main contribution of AI is bad writing that can masquerade as good writing, be produced in industrial-scale quantities, and flood all the channels. That's a much different thing.

IMHO the main achievement of LLMs will be to destroy. It'll consume utterly massive quantities of resources to basically undermine processes and technologies that once created a huge amount of value (e.g. using the internet for wide-scale conversation).

I mean, schools are going back to handwritten essays, for Christ's sake.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#213

Post by veqz »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #27
ealexhudson wrote: post #3

I don't want to sound too dismissive, but all these arguments have been brought up time and again. The move from assembler to high level languages. The introduction of OOP. Component architecture / COM / CORBA / etc. The development of the web browser. The introduction of Java. 2018 isn't "the start of the decline", it's just another data point on a line that leads from, y'know, Elite 8-bit on a single tape in a few…

I think another part of this, is that Tech is perhaps the only industry that hasn't quite gotten over itself yet. Writing code is artistic the same way plumbing is artistic. Writing code is artistic the same way home wiring is artistic. Writing code is artistic the same way HVAC is artistic. Which is to say, yes, there is satisfaction to be had, but companies don't care as long as it gets the job done without too man…

Perhaps. But put another way:

Writing code is artistic the same way writing text is.

Whether that is a function call, an ad, a screen script, a newspaper article, or a chapter in a paperback the writer has to know what one wants to communicate, who the audience/users will be, the flow of the text, and how understandable it will be.

Most professionally engaged writers get paid for their output, but many more simply write because they want to, and it gives them pleasure. While I'm sure the jobs can be both monetarily and intellectually rewarding, I have yet to see people who do plumbing or electrical work for fun?

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#214

Post by swed420 »

portaouflop wrote: post #211
swed420 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s becoming exhausting to avoid all of these commonly used phrases! That's not the only price society pays. It makes sense for us to develop the heuristics to detect AI, but the implication of doing so has its own cost. It started out as people avoiding the use of em-dash in order to avoid being mistaken for being AI, for example. Now in the case of OP's observation, it will pressure real humans to not use the fo…

I actually liked the em dash. But now I stopped using it. Probably will be good to use soon as AI gets trained to not use it.

Unfortunately the time each cycle takes from start to finish is measured in months or years, and it's an endless game of whac-o-mole.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#215

Post by davidgay »

rudedogg wrote: post #51
fzeindl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you plot the line it's probably still curving up and I'm not clear at which point (if ever) it would start bending the other way. I suspect when Moore‘s law ends and we cannot build substantially faster machines anymore.

One interesting thing that most non-systems programmers don’t know is that memory and cpu performance have improved at completely different rates. That’s a large part of why we have x times faster CPUs but software is still slow. The systems people worry more about memory usage for this reason, and prefer manual memory management.

> ... memory and cpu performance have improved at completely different rates.

This is overly simplified. To a first approximation, bandwidth has kept track with CPU performance, and main memory latency is basically unchanged. My 1985 Amiga had 125ns main-memory latency, though the processor itself saw 250ns latency - current main memory latencies are in the 50-100ns range. Caches are what 'fix' this discrepancy.

You would need to clarify how manual memory management relates to this... (cache placement/control? copying GCs causing caching issues? something else?)

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#216

Post by zggf »

"Instead of addressing fundamental quality issues, Big Tech has chosen the most expensive possible response: throw money at infrastructure." "They're spending 30% of revenue on infrastructure (historically 12.5%). Meanwhile, cloud revenue growth is slowing."

Isn't this because: cloud gets more popular -> more big players join -> they compete with each other -> margins get lower?

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#217

Post by ponector »

zahrevsky wrote: post #202
ertgbnm wrote: post #28

Unrelated but my current AI text flag is the use of "It's not X. It's Y." It's become so repetitive recently. Examples from this post alone: 1. "This isn't about AI. The quality crisis started years before ChatGPT existed." 2. "The degradation isn't gradual—it's exponential." 3. "These aren't feature requirements. They're memory leaks that nobody bothered to fix." 4. "This wasn't sophisticated. This was Computer Scie…

100%. I think it's irritating, because it's a cheap way to create drama out of nowhere.

It’s not drama. It’s attention-seeking dressed up as emotion.

/s

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#218

Post by BrenBarn »

dlcarrier wrote: post #65
ealexhudson wrote: post #3

I don't want to sound too dismissive, but all these arguments have been brought up time and again. The move from assembler to high level languages. The introduction of OOP. Component architecture / COM / CORBA / etc. The development of the web browser. The introduction of Java. 2018 isn't "the start of the decline", it's just another data point on a line that leads from, y'know, Elite 8-bit on a single tape in a few…

I blame software updates. That's when software went from generally working on release to not at all. Agile management methods set up a non-existent release method called "waterfall" as a straw man, where software isn't released until it works, practically eliminating technical debt. I'm hoping someone fleshes it out into a real management method. I'm not convinced this wasn't the plan in the first place, considering…

> I blame software updates. That's when software went from generally working on release to not at all.

I agree. So much software these days treats users as testers and is essentially a giant test-in-production gaffe.

Re: The great software quality collapse or, how we normalized catastrophe

#219

Post by ponector »

gkedzierski wrote: post #44
creativeSlumber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have disagreed with you in the past by saying, "until it breaks something critical and you loose customers and business", but then again people just moved on from the Crowdstrike incident like business as usual.If something like that which grounded critical service globally and had an estimated 10 Billion Dollar economic impact doesn't change mindsets,I don't know what will.

That's because no one died. All the safety critical industries are already heavily regulated. E.g. check out for example standards like DO-178C (for software in airborne systems), where you even have to _prove_ correctness of every tool and dependency you use, on top of accountability and traceability of every single line of code in your own product.

People died in Boeing 737 mcas incidents and what? Hot fix and business as usual.

Unless bug results in enormous direct financial loses like in Knight Capital, the result is the same: no one held responsible, continue business as usual.

Post reply on HN