[brazzy]

No. Errors in production have become more common because they have become much more tolerable (cheaper and faster to fix), and (apart from the massively increased feature scope and complexity of the environment) tolerating errors (that are soon fixed) gets you more features and shorter time-to-market.

Users value software that does more and is available now more than software that is perfect, but does less and comes out next year.

[Joeri]

Users value software that works. The driving forces behind featuritis have very little to do with what users want.

[seabee]

Users come up with feature requests all the time. Featuritis is exactly what the users ask for.

[Someone]

What users ask for is not necessarily what they want. A good designer listens to what users say, but doesn't follow them to the letter.

('Twas the night before Christmas variation on this topic: http://www.daclarke.org/Humour/sware-engr.html)

[zbyszek]

They do, but they also want things simpler. Reconciling these conflicting demands is the trick.

[wpietri]

Yes. Basically we've shifted from emphasizing high MBTF to low MTTR. Especially with techniques like continuous deployment and gradual rollout, it's relatively painless for all involved.

And I think it's necessary. The explosion in software complexity, platform complexity, and platform variation means that trying for absolute perfection is much more expensive than it was. And that's before we even look at the much higher requirements volatility.

[josephlord]

MTTR?

[ghaff]

Mean Time To Repair. In other words, parent poster is saying that we tolerate more failures because we can fix them quickly.

I basically agree although it's obviously a vast oversimplification. I'd probably argue that we tend to have architectures that are often more resilient as well.

[ScottBurson]

Mean Time To Repair.