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On Disenchantment with the Current State of Software Development

posted by chromas on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:12PM   Printer-friendly
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

 
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  • (Score: 2) by CZB on Thursday October 04 2018, @02:35AM (3 children)

    by CZB (6457) on Thursday October 04 2018, @02:35AM (#743804)

    If you can't think of a way to change big industry wide problems, look smaller and find a business or project you can work at that does things right. The market for your product isn't the world, its just your customers who want something done your way.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:36AM (2 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday October 04 2018, @04:36AM (#743858) Homepage Journal

    Consider security software. If I want to be well-paid to write secure code for a customer that is happy to permit me all the time I required, I'll do so for the CIA.

    But that doesn't do anything to prevent the next Federal Office Of Personnel Management hack.

    The OPM hack, thought to have been perpetrated by the PRC, lifted the applications of every Federal employee who had ever applied for a security clearance. In response the CIA withdrew _all_ of our clandestine agents from China.

    The OPM employee who telephoned my Aunt to inform her that the PRC had lifted Auntie's records too was in tears the whole time they were in the phone.

    What can we do to prevent stuff like that?

    The Internet Protocol spec - the low level IP packet spec specifically, not TCP or UDP - has header fields for Classification - Top Secret, Confidential and the like - as well as Compartment. If you and I both design ICBMs but you do the warheads while I do the engines, you and I will be in different Compartments so our two computers will be unable to communicate.

    That ALL BY ITSELF should have been sufficient to prevent Bradley Manning having lifted all those diplomatic cables.

    But packet-level IP security doesn't work when the Army and the State Department buy their routers online at Alibaba.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]