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

71–80 of 260 posts

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

#71

Post by TimorousBestie »

ecshafer wrote: post #39

Big Tech spending $300 Billion on infrastructure is a really good reason for power companies and the government to build power infrastructure faster. Where there is money, there is a way. The US is starting to talk about (finally) opening up some new nukes.

> The US is starting to talk about (finally) opening up some new nukes.

At the cost of shutting down solar/wind development. The policy change was a net negative for future capacity, and nukes alone won’t cover but a fraction of predicted AI power requirements.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000377

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

#72

Post by bgwalter »

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…

That is a sharp observation and you are absolutely right to point it out! We are here not to consume, but to critically evaluate, not to skim, but to understand.

Would you like me to generate a chart that shows how humans have adopted AI-speak over time?

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

#73

Post by 0xWTF »

imiric wrote: post #62
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…

If you haven't noticed a dramatic decline in average software quality, you're not paying attention or willfully ignoring it. The article is right. This is partly related to the explosion of new developers entering the industry, coupled with the classic "move fast and break things" mentality, and further exacerbated by the current "AI" wave. Junior developers don't have a clear path at becoming senior developers anymo…

Is this measureable? Like code readability scores on the GitHub corpus over time?

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

#75

Post by phlakaton »

bgwalter wrote: post #72
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…

That is a sharp observation and you are absolutely right to point it out! We are here not to consume, but to critically evaluate, not to skim, but to understand. Would you like me to generate a chart that shows how humans have adopted AI-speak over time?

Now look, you.

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

#76

Post by stego-tech »

Speaking from the IT side of things: this is not new to AI, but the author hits the nail on the head that general incompetence along with a dozen layers of abstraction has made quality a non-concern for developers the world over. People and companies both broadly just don’t care to build good products when cheap slop will sell at higher prices long enough for their RSUs to vest and the share price to rise.

I am sick and tired of the hand-waving dismissal of shitty software developers who don’t want to do the hard fucking work of writing performant software anymore. These people taking home $300k+ salaries leaning on vibe coding to game productivity metrics and letting others wipe their ass on their behalf isn’t just disgusting on a personal level, it should be intolerable by all the rest of us squandering our lives for lower pay and forced on-call schedules just to make sure they never have to be held accountable for their gobshite code.

I, like the author, am sick of it. Write better code, because I am beyond tired slaving away for a fraction of your pay in IT just to cover your ass.

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

#77

Post by xg15 »

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…

Yeah, the beginning of the article could reasonably pass for a "rage blog", but the end almost reads like an Axios article, with nothing but bullet points and "clever" headlines, in a weirdly formulaic way.

Also, what's the deal with all the "The " headlines?

Smells a lot like AI.

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

#78

Post by mariopt »

I can clearly tell just by using websites and mobile apps, the amount of silly bugs in the last 3 years or so is ridiculous. QA roles are going down and everyone believes they can vibe code production grade products without meaningful knowledge.

"AI just weaponized existing incompetence." - Love this phrase, it summarises very well what AI is doing to software and it will get worse.

Post reply on HN