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?

#651

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #650

ragall wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather, you're the one stuck thinking this is about yourself. If you read more attentively, you'd see I carefully phrased my reply to avoid mentioning you. You say you aren't good at it, but have you ever tried ? I suppose not, so you'll never know if you'd have been good at it. This is not a quality that comes innate, it's something that one must learn and cultivate. The important thing here is the observation that…

Has it not occurred to you that the job of manager has changed in this time? The people managers I am friends with bemoan spending half of their lives doing paperwork for performance reviews. It wasn’t always that way. To be a project manager is spend half your life in JIRA workflows. I don’t want to become a manager not just because I’m not good at it, but also because it doesn’t look even slightly enjoyable. Why wo…

[deleted]

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

#652

Post by tremon » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

dosisking wrote: post #537

pigeons wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including the linux kernel.

I dread Linux kernel updates. Still running a 4.4 era kernel. Kernel versions have always been hit or miss, some are good, others introduced a new bug. Sometimes it's necessary to upgrade glibc as well which is a huge pain.

People don't choose a Super LTS distro/kernel because they want newer kernel versions, they want stability. What the hell are you doing trying to shoehorn a newer kernel into Ubuntu 16.04?

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

#653

Post by m3047 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 11:27 PM UTC

cmiller1 wrote: post #143

frameset wrote: post #37

> I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. One of my absolute favourite features on KDE Plasma with Wayland is the global setting to control what can steal focus. It works wonderfully, and I always miss it wh…

I think this is less a "macOS lacks the feature to prevent focus stealing" and more they never even imagined the scenario where it takes time for the app to open. Instead of even considering that a user may add inputs while waiting for launch, potentially signaling that they are no longer requesting focus from the program they clicked on, they simply designed for the optimistic case where there never IS time for the…

Seems like the programmers at LinkedIn never imagined that the network isn't reliable, and can't invalidate the session on actual logout; it only happens when whatever page is replacing the logout page finishes loading.

Is it could be a bug (IMO yes, a credential disposition / security bug), or it could be a "feature tax" to keep the tracking context hot for whatever page you logged out of LinkedIn to avoid being tracked...

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

#654

Post by ragall » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 11:32 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #650

ragall wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather, you're the one stuck thinking this is about yourself. If you read more attentively, you'd see I carefully phrased my reply to avoid mentioning you. You say you aren't good at it, but have you ever tried ? I suppose not, so you'll never know if you'd have been good at it. This is not a quality that comes innate, it's something that one must learn and cultivate. The important thing here is the observation that…

Has it not occurred to you that the job of manager has changed in this time? The people managers I am friends with bemoan spending half of their lives doing paperwork for performance reviews. It wasn’t always that way. To be a project manager is spend half your life in JIRA workflows. I don’t want to become a manager not just because I’m not good at it, but also because it doesn’t look even slightly enjoyable. Why wo…

> Has it not occurred to you that the job of manager has changed in this time?

Maybe, but that still doesn't answer the question. In my many years working for a FAANG in Europe, almost all good managers were non-US, even in the sister teams on the US side. On the US side, the best managers I've worked with were, with a few exceptions, first generation immigrants from India, Iran, Lebanon or various European countries.

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

#655

Post by QuantumNoodle » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 11:57 PM UTC

For my team to re-work fragile, complex parts of the system we need to push back at product from shipping "features." Product does not see reliability as a feature they can advertise -- it's expected. And frankly I can't be bothered to keep taking side quests to fix things that increase my workload, I will burn out again. I want to fix things. But our planning revolves around implementing features customers are waiting for (aka compete in the market.) I am responsible with AI tools but not everyone I work with are. Even though responsible AI users are in the majority, our system is only as stable as the weakest link.

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

#656

Post by jason_oster » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 2:03 AM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #459

jason_oster wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coding litterally is cheap. We outsource it for wages that you'd expect of a bottom-level fast food employee. We've been doing that for many years. It doesn't take a 4 year education to learn how to use loops, functions, and basic data structures. Most of you could probably code by the end of your fresan year of college. Many probably learned at least some coding before college. I've learned plenty since those days.…

It's a get-what-you-pay-for thing. If coding is cheap, you get a low-effort, likely low-quality product. The conclusion is that coding is not cheap, only managers and business-minded decision makers are.

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

#657

Post by entropy47 » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #467

entropy47 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good PMs out there watching in horror as their peers make changes and features that are obviously doomed (to anybody with a functional brain). I also write as much code as the median engineer on my team (skews junior). Please don't write off the entire profession based on many (most?) being awful - if you work with a good PM some day I promise you will find there is an important point to the job.

I want to agree with this, but I’ve watched the PM discipline, in concert with the even more dastardly MBAs, ruin everything I hold dear.

I think it's a question of integrity - I have reached a comfortable ceiling in my career, but doing the dumb shit would have got me further, faster. I don't begrudge the peers who have sold out when the delta is $1m+ a year but I personally got into CS for the art, not the money.

A lot of people know the exec bandwagon things are going to fail and do it anyway because of incentive misalignment.

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

#658

Post by jason_oster » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 2:15 AM UTC

marklubi wrote: post #448

rtpg wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with good product people. They come up with good ideas, have great suggestions, leave latitude for implementation issues to guide some of the design, and work well in the constraints. It is kinda amazing because you might be given a good idea/ticket, and it just flows smoothly and naturally (building on top of existing good product design of course) Having them around is like 100000x better than having ju…

I started using the term “opinionated software” a little over 15 years when I was starting a new company. I built what I wanted as a participant and a fan of the sport. Lots of other people had their opinions on it (“you’re doing it wrong and everyone wants it this way,” “you must have this feature” which barely anyone actually uses… the power users), but I held fast with my opinion (did usability testing to prove th…

I love opinioned software.

If an idea of what the software is supposed to do conflicts with what the software does or intends to do, then the idea is wrong. What product people do (even good ones) is stretch the product to scratch every itch and address every user request, despite the software's opinion. That's Zawinski's Law. (See also the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Which unfortunately does not have a pithy name to my knowledge.)

The best thing a product team can do is learn to say no.

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

#659

Post by jason_oster » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

thewebguyd wrote: post #483

jason_oster wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is to gut your product org, replace management with leading engineers, and hire some of your most fanatic users. They don't need to do anything other than give their opinions, and use the product every day. Put them in a room with your top engineers, and the software will mysteriously get better. I feel like there's this one random comment on HN that should be adopted on its merits alone, but everyone…

> replace management with leading engineers Wasn't this the whole point of agile and self organizing teams? Then managers with 10 different PM* acronyms in their email signature got hired in, with no engineering experience, to lead product and software teams?

I don't know if that's what agile was supposed to do, but replacing management with "anyone but leading engineers" is exactly opposite of what GP proposed.

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

#660

Post by jason_oster » Sun, Jul 26, 2026, 2:22 AM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #566

jason_oster wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is to gut your product org, replace management with leading engineers, and hire some of your most fanatic users. They don't need to do anything other than give their opinions, and use the product every day. Put them in a room with your top engineers, and the software will mysteriously get better. I feel like there's this one random comment on HN that should be adopted on its merits alone, but everyone…

> I feel like there's this one random comment on HN that should be adopted on its merits alone, but everyone will ignore for no good reason. Because it's populist slop, just like how every long enough discussion about government incompetence will lead to someone proposing all political leaders should be paid minimum wage to fix the problem. Don't forget, the entire Web 2.0 winner ecosystem of companies that make up o…

Taking out the trash is not populist slop. If you have a bad product org, the right thing to do is replace it. If you have a bad engineering org, the right thing to do is replace it.

It is difficult to draw any conclusions other than you like to keep things broken.