SoylentNews

On Disenchantment with the Current State of Software Development

posted by chromas on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:12PM   
from the the-future-is-now,-old-man dept.

canopic jug writes:

Nikita Prokopov has written a blog post detailing disenchantment with current software development. He has been writing software for 15 years and now regards the industry’s growing lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence as a problem to be solved. He addresses the following points one by one:

• Everything is unbearably slow
• Everything is too large
• Bitrot
• Half-baked products get shipped
• The same old problems recur again and again
• Most code has grown too complex to refactor
• Business is uninterested in improvement

---

Original Submission

• Purposefully naive? Purposefully naive? (Score: 5, Insightful) by arslan on Thursday October 04 2018, @12:44AM (2 children)

  by arslan (3462) on Thursday October 04 2018, @12:44AM (#743777)

  Jeez.. some of the stuff on that blog reeks of naivety.

  As a general trend, we’re not getting faster software with more features. We’re getting faster hardware that runs slower software with the same features.

  That is patently untrue. We do get faster hardware with more features. It is just not a feature the user wants, it also includes features the product owner wants like telemetry. But yes, it runs slower.

  The rest of the arguments is more of the same. He doesn't seem to understand that the world at some point went from a very simple

  "I earn money by trying to sell you a product by making the features for you and have longevity to make it attractive to own so you get bang for you buck"

  to

  "I earn money by giving or selling you a product at minimal cost that will give you features you want but also pack with features that will allow me to sell your consumption activity"

  and

  "I earn money by selling you a cheaply manufactured product with the features you want with no longevity at all so we can rinse and repeat this for me to get a continuous revenue stream"

  ... and it goes on and on.

  It is all about consumerism and to some extent globalism. The software industry isn't bad, it is just doing what the market is asking it. Until the market's model changes, the majority of software developers out there who are in it to make a living will continue to do as asked. Only the minority who are financially independent enough will venture into the purist state of his rallying cry.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+3
  Insightful=3, Total=3
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:Purposefully naive? Re:Purposefully naive? (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday October 04 2018, @06:00PM (1 child)

  by jmorris (4844) on Thursday October 04 2018, @06:00PM (#744215)

  See my comment above about the size of the bluetooth stack on Fedora. That isn't being driven by rampant consumerism, it is driven by stupidity.

  Parent

  • Re:Purposefully naive? (Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:22PM

    by arslan (3462) on Thursday October 04 2018, @10:22PM (#744362)

    Sure. I'm sure there lots of example of true stupidity in code. I've seen em myself and dailyWTF and codinghorror has lots of em. The blog post talks about bloatware in browsers and our PCs getting beefier but still going slow. In general all these are because of adware and telemetry. That is not just coding stupidity. That is conscious capitalism.

    Parent