Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by phendrenad2 1618 days ago
Software quality is suffering because we don't have software problems anymore. You can't make a new operating system, or make a new compiler, and make money. Those areas have been filled, and, software is evergreen so you can just port it to new hardware.

What we have are social problems, people problems, "disruption" to existing industries, etc. This is software "eating the world" (because it ran out of software problems to eat). This is why every startup pitch is "We're disrupting the commercial real estate loan industry" or "we're disrupting the mine subsidence claims industry". Just absolutely insane hail-mary startups trying desperately to find some niche that hasn't been invaded by software already.
2 comments
redisman 1618 days ago
OS is a good example. Recent MacOS and Linux are easily the highest quality OSes that have existed. iOS and Android are quite good too. Unless you go back to when OSes could be extremely simple.
link
tick_tock_tick 1618 days ago
> Recent MacOS

Is an example of a system going downhill fast. Critical bugs making it though whole beta into the final release. Hell remember https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-patches-severe-macos-big... from just last year?

MacOS quality has been on the decline as the focus has shifted to iOS.

link
acmdas 1618 days ago
There seem to be a lot of Apple users who wouldn't agree. My MacBook Pro is early 2011 so I haven't been able to use the newest, but I can't say that each upgrade from Lion to High Sierra was clearly an improvement for my use cases (writing and coding). YMMV.
link
timhrothgar 1618 days ago
It would seem that this factor is important for understanding how we got here. If the hail-mary fails, nobody will notice. But sometimes it succeeds and when it does the engineers at said startup typically build upon a rotten core.
link