6 ms·

> Nah, that's like wondering why is this ice block sitting on a hot plate and still solid. The answer is: because it just got put there, and it'll melt in a mom

> Nah, that's like wondering why is this ice block sitting on a hot plate and still solid. The answer is: because it just got put there, and it'll melt in a moment. So too, will end high salaries, as most low-hanging fruits get eaten by software, made by mass-produced cohort of programmers. Our industry has its share of cycles, but this, in my view, is largely wishful thinking on the part of people. Nothing wrong with optimism but... Every 5-10 years there's a "technical shift" that forces everyone to reevaluate how they build software or more importantly what they build, and the race starts all over again. The ice block is removed from the hot plate is replaced by a bigger, colder block of ice. And when these technical shifts aren't taking place, the bar for what constitutes as "good software" inches upward. If your standards for acceptable software were frozen in time in 1985: using modern hardware and software toolchains, you could accomplish in one day what used to take a small team an entire month. But if I delivered, say, what passed for a "good enough" database in 1985, it would resemble someone's 200-level CS final project rather than a commercially-viable piece of software.

kerng 8y ago
I have not noticed these technical shifts per se. What I have noticed is that mature engineers move on and do other things and new ones reinvent the wheel with some new fancy language or term which then becomes the new way of doing things, and the cycle repeats. Sometimes there is a great deal of value when a new level of abstraction happens but I wouldnt call this a shift, it's just progression. Many of the underlying problems and solutions exist for decades. Database systems you mention are a good example of this.
- spamizbad 8y ago
  When I talk about shifts, I'm referring to things like the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, which increase the net-demand for software and along with an entirely new specializations of knowledge. While there are some key concepts to things like databases, the fact remains that your 1985 database would not be considered sufficient in todays world: It would have too many limitations, lack features we now take for granted, would not scale to modern data requirements, etc. Supporting all that "modern" functionality is non-trivial and requires a huge amount of effort. You can't just say "Well, we figured out space and computationally-efficient hashing, so relational databases are well on their way to being feature-complete" There's a reason we haven't stuck with 1.0 on our platforms, and it's not just security or a desire for a bigger version number: New demands required new functionality and new ways of building things.
  - convolvatron 8y ago
    i'll just leave this here https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Databases.html?id=sepQAAAAMAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Databases.h...
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      MongoDB didn't become a public company through innovations in fundamental distributed database technology or even through good engineering. They became a public company because once Javascript became adequate for building client software, there was a strong incentive to build MVPs using the same data structures from client to server to DB, and once you build an MVP that gets adoption there's a strong incentive not to switch databases. That's the sort of shift in the environment that the grandparent is talking about. Fundamental CS tech was arguably better in the 1970s and 1980s, because it moved more slowly and you had time to get the details right. That doesn't matter if you're building say a mobile Ethereum wallet in 2018, because you're building for the user expectations of today, they don't care about data integrity or security as long as it doesn't fail during the period where they're deciding which tech to use, and software that solves the problem (poorly) now is better than software that doesn't exist.
      - ams6110 8y ago
        > software that solves the problem (poorly) now is better than software that doesn't exist. That has always been the case and is about as good a one-line summary of the software industry as I can think of.
        fnord123 8y ago
        It could be a one line summary of Richard Gabriel's famous essay "The Rise of "Worse is Better"" https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
        chrisco255 8y ago
        Done is better than good!
- lumost 8y ago
  In maturing parts of the software industry you'll often see a desire to stay with the times in order to maintain a competitive edge, re-inventing the wheel often looks like full/partial re-writes of a system for minor marginal gains. A great example of this is the evolution of FB/Google/Amazon. Portions of their core tech have been completely re-written over the years for marginal gain, but there is a large premium to being the best in tech. In other parts of the industry every new cycle enables some new area of tech, and those marginal gains become the minimum bar for entry. e.g. Deep Learning and Computer Vision, distributed systems and cloud computing/SaaS.
  - hopler 8y ago
    You overestimate the quality and reliability and expandability of those old systems. The 1998 10 Blue Links tech couldn't support the functionality and scale of Google today.
gaius 8y ago
your standards for acceptable software were frozen in time in 1985 Haha in 1985 Amiga had a multitasking GUI desktop in 512k and 7Mhz. Now we have millions of times more computational power and struggle to deliver an experience as crisp and satisfying. I wish people still made software like it was 1985, that actually used the full power of the hardware for something useful...
- spamizbad 8y ago
  Yeah but Exec/Kickstart/Workbench was missing some basic niceties that are table stakes today: - No process or kernel security (processes could rewrite kernel code) - Processes could effectively disable the scheduler - Supported only a single, fixed address space: both a massive limitation and a performance hack that made the system bearable to use - Single-user - No security model There are embedded applications these days where not having these features are deak-breakers. Let me assure you: if you re-implemented the original Amiga OS feature set it too will be screaming fast. The tricky part is keeping it fast once you start adding protection and additional functionality on top of it. And largely what happened when you tried to implement more complicated applications on top of these primitive systems is that they would crash the entire system, constantly.
  - makapuf 8y ago
    That and the fact that amiga was clean room design. IBM Pc was already old and even x86-64 won over itanium. Backwards compatibility has a cost but also gains. Amiga wasn't even compatible with c64.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Itaninum only lost because Intel did the mistake to allow AMD to design x86 chips.
      - makapuf 8y ago
        That would mean itanium could have won only by a monopoly and that with open competition, backwards compatibility won.
gcb0 8y ago
your whole point is extremely backwards! software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" today supports of browsers! not to mention that every corporation with a software team also had usability and QA teams. Software quality and resiliency was much better than today. Then in the 90s it took a dive because online made "first to market wins", and it have been downhill from there. so, your software concepts from 85 would be overkill today, not lacking.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  Agreed, and the games industry may be the clearest example of this. In 1985 the developers had to actually ship a finished game, there wasn't the opportunity to release a half-finished product and update it later. Compare to Fallout 76, which was very clearly unfinished at launch. Edit:typo
  - hopler 8y ago
    Games in 1985 shipped with bugs baked in that people were just stuck with. Civilization had a broken Gandhi, and still shipped 4 different bugfix versions.
    - dmd 8y ago
      Neither Civilization nor Windows existed in 1985.
      - icedchai 8y ago
        Take a guess when Windows 1.0 was released.
        dmd 8y ago
        > "software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" There was one variation of Windows in 1985. (And I remember installing it!)
packet_nerd 8y ago
> inches upward I wish it inched upward... So much software now-days is bloated crap.
ralphc 8y ago
Preach, brother/sister! My career started in the early '80s and I say this all the time in comments here on HN. You had less to work with but less was expected of you.
sethammons 8y ago
I think you analysis is fair, but Glassdoor data is a bit off. At my work, I filled out salary data on Glassdoor and it never showed up. Maybe they thought it too high?

kerng 8y ago

I have not noticed these technical shifts per se. What I have noticed is that mature engineers move on and do other things and new ones reinvent the wheel with some new fancy language or term which then becomes the new way of doing things, and the cycle repeats. Sometimes there is a great deal of value when a new level of abstraction happens but I wouldnt call this a shift, it's just progression. Many of the underlying problems and solutions exist for decades. Database systems you mention are a good example of this.

spamizbad 8y ago
When I talk about shifts, I'm referring to things like the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, which increase the net-demand for software and along with an entirely new specializations of knowledge. While there are some key concepts to things like databases, the fact remains that your 1985 database would not be considered sufficient in todays world: It would have too many limitations, lack features we now take for granted, would not scale to modern data requirements, etc. Supporting all that "modern" functionality is non-trivial and requires a huge amount of effort. You can't just say "Well, we figured out space and computationally-efficient hashing, so relational databases are well on their way to being feature-complete" There's a reason we haven't stuck with 1.0 on our platforms, and it's not just security or a desire for a bigger version number: New demands required new functionality and new ways of building things.
- convolvatron 8y ago
  i'll just leave this here https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Databases.html?id=sepQAAAAMAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/Distributed_Databases.h...
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    MongoDB didn't become a public company through innovations in fundamental distributed database technology or even through good engineering. They became a public company because once Javascript became adequate for building client software, there was a strong incentive to build MVPs using the same data structures from client to server to DB, and once you build an MVP that gets adoption there's a strong incentive not to switch databases. That's the sort of shift in the environment that the grandparent is talking about. Fundamental CS tech was arguably better in the 1970s and 1980s, because it moved more slowly and you had time to get the details right. That doesn't matter if you're building say a mobile Ethereum wallet in 2018, because you're building for the user expectations of today, they don't care about data integrity or security as long as it doesn't fail during the period where they're deciding which tech to use, and software that solves the problem (poorly) now is better than software that doesn't exist.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      > software that solves the problem (poorly) now is better than software that doesn't exist. That has always been the case and is about as good a one-line summary of the software industry as I can think of.
      - fnord123 8y ago
        It could be a one line summary of Richard Gabriel's famous essay "The Rise of "Worse is Better"" https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
      - chrisco255 8y ago
        Done is better than good!
lumost 8y ago
In maturing parts of the software industry you'll often see a desire to stay with the times in order to maintain a competitive edge, re-inventing the wheel often looks like full/partial re-writes of a system for minor marginal gains. A great example of this is the evolution of FB/Google/Amazon. Portions of their core tech have been completely re-written over the years for marginal gain, but there is a large premium to being the best in tech. In other parts of the industry every new cycle enables some new area of tech, and those marginal gains become the minimum bar for entry. e.g. Deep Learning and Computer Vision, distributed systems and cloud computing/SaaS.
- hopler 8y ago
  You overestimate the quality and reliability and expandability of those old systems. The 1998 10 Blue Links tech couldn't support the functionality and scale of Google today.

gaius 8y ago

your standards for acceptable software were frozen in time in 1985 Haha in 1985 Amiga had a multitasking GUI desktop in 512k and 7Mhz. Now we have millions of times more computational power and struggle to deliver an experience as crisp and satisfying. I wish people still made software like it was 1985, that actually used the full power of the hardware for something useful...

spamizbad 8y ago
Yeah but Exec/Kickstart/Workbench was missing some basic niceties that are table stakes today: - No process or kernel security (processes could rewrite kernel code) - Processes could effectively disable the scheduler - Supported only a single, fixed address space: both a massive limitation and a performance hack that made the system bearable to use - Single-user - No security model There are embedded applications these days where not having these features are deak-breakers. Let me assure you: if you re-implemented the original Amiga OS feature set it too will be screaming fast. The tricky part is keeping it fast once you start adding protection and additional functionality on top of it. And largely what happened when you tried to implement more complicated applications on top of these primitive systems is that they would crash the entire system, constantly.
- makapuf 8y ago
  That and the fact that amiga was clean room design. IBM Pc was already old and even x86-64 won over itanium. Backwards compatibility has a cost but also gains. Amiga wasn't even compatible with c64.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Itaninum only lost because Intel did the mistake to allow AMD to design x86 chips.
    - makapuf 8y ago
      That would mean itanium could have won only by a monopoly and that with open competition, backwards compatibility won.

gcb0 8y ago

your whole point is extremely backwards! software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" today supports of browsers! not to mention that every corporation with a software team also had usability and QA teams. Software quality and resiliency was much better than today. Then in the 90s it took a dive because online made "first to market wins", and it have been downhill from there. so, your software concepts from 85 would be overkill today, not lacking.

zrobotics 8y ago
Agreed, and the games industry may be the clearest example of this. In 1985 the developers had to actually ship a finished game, there wasn't the opportunity to release a half-finished product and update it later. Compare to Fallout 76, which was very clearly unfinished at launch. Edit:typo
- hopler 8y ago
  Games in 1985 shipped with bugs baked in that people were just stuck with. Civilization had a broken Gandhi, and still shipped 4 different bugfix versions.
  - dmd 8y ago
    Neither Civilization nor Windows existed in 1985.
    - icedchai 8y ago
      Take a guess when Windows 1.0 was released.
      - dmd 8y ago
        > "software in 1985 was more "complete" than today. Even CD roms shipped with magazines had to support more windows variations than "good software" There was one variation of Windows in 1985. (And I remember installing it!)

packet_nerd 8y ago

> inches upward I wish it inched upward... So much software now-days is bloated crap.

ralphc 8y ago

Preach, brother/sister! My career started in the early '80s and I say this all the time in comments here on HN. You had less to work with but less was expected of you.

sethammons 8y ago

I think you analysis is fair, but Glassdoor data is a bit off. At my work, I filled out salary data on Glassdoor and it never showed up. Maybe they thought it too high?