14 ms·

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freakin

by efitz 6y ago

I have worked for software companies for over 25 years, mostly on teams building software, and I hate software. I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). In addition to questionable quality, software is often downright hostile (lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page). Ironically software engineering tools (build systems, etc.) are some of the worst. I don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is.

ashtonkem 6y ago
Cobbler’s children have no shoes.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> accidentally backspace while not in a text field Thankfully that can be disabled, but I find it to be one of the most infuriating 'features' of Firefox. If it weren't something that could be turned off, it would be a deal killer all by itself.
- TakerofVita 6y ago
  Well, Chrome used to do this too until they removed it in 2016. Internet explorer does this. It was more of a default than a 'feature of Firefox'.
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  I didn't even know this "feature" was available on Firefox (despite using it since version 2). Turns out, it is only enabled on Windows: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.backspace_action http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.backspace_action Maybe it was copied from IE to keep "closer to the platform"?
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    It's definitely not limited to Windows. I am exclusively a MacOS user (for my workstation, at least) and I have had to disable it on any new Firefox install.
- bhauer 6y ago
  Also, in most normal web pages—at least those not using hideously over-complicated scripting—just pressing your "forward" button (Alt+Right, for example) will navigate forward and restore the edits you had in the form.
hrktb 6y ago
Doesn’t reality suck the same ? My gas car stinks, destroys the planet, needs yearly maintenance, crashes in everything the second I stop paying attention. My house decays days after day. Floors need constant cleaning, wall have holes from small impacts, paint contains inedible fragments and disperse nocive gas. Bees are building nests on my balcony and it’s definitely not what it was built for, nor where they should be. How can we tolerate such a life ?
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  I think the difference is that the entire software/hardware stack is a world created entirely by humans, untouched by "reality" for the purposes of all these annoyances, so it feels like we should be able to wrangle it better after so many decades. It's entirely our own creation, and we decide every iota of it, and yet it bites us (justifiably or not - turns out thousands of people each creating different layers of a gigantic state machine is hard to perfectly coordinate, but we may have been able to do better by now if we had been more thoughtful and patient throughout).
  - ihadfun 6y ago
    We probably could make gas stink less just like we could fix that bug. The ROI just isn’t there.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Gas stinking is a feature, not a bug. It's a safety measure. Particularly when we're talking gas (and not gasoline), which is naturally odorless and made to stink on purpose.
  - Out_of_Characte 6y ago
    Reality creeps in from us creating tech-utopia trough "legacy" systems where the internet, cryptography, multi-core architecture and full program isolation didn't exist yet. Software has a nasty habit of iterating on yesterday's ideas instead of rewriting for tomorrow. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it seems to be the path of least resistance thusfar.
julianlam 6y ago
> lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page Nowadays, I would consider this a problem with the browser. How often does one navigate backwards with the backspace key? Recently, I had some doubts over whether or not I should clobber the native browser behaviour for "ctrl-s", but then I realized that nobody anywhere EVER saves a web page to disk... and if they really needed to, the browser toolbar is right there.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I for one fully expect the backspace button to work if I do not currently have a text field focused. once you learn keybindings for an application, there's usually no way to perform that function as quickly/efficiently with a mouse. please do not break the conventional ones. ctrl-s is probably fine to break though. even when it does "save" the page, it rarely does so in a useful way.
  - LolWolf 6y ago
    On Mac the other default for navigating backwards is Cmd-[, if that helps any! (It's also a default in many applications for navigating backwards in whatever sense the app may intend.) I don't use Windows other than for gaming, so I'm afraid I don't know if there are other shortcuts other than backspace.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      fyi, you can get pretty far on the basic shortcuts subbing ctrl for cmd.
    - jmholla 6y ago
      Alt-Left is back and Alt-Right is forward. Sadly, their equivalents on Mac are also for navigating to the beginning and end of the line so if you're in a text box you lose that control. Your alternative is handy. I wonder if it also works on Linux.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
>I don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is. What we've got here is a question of cost and choice. If my choices are all equally bad, IE: vendor one is not any worse than vendor two, then inertia or cost become determining factors. In terms of consumer software - consumers have been conditioned to have low expectations, and these costs are further reduced because prices are so often free or very low-cost. In regards to commercial-focused packages - again, so often we put up with it because the systems we're using are so complicated and specialized that the pool of options are limited and/or the domain is so complicated that problems are inevitable. So long as this is the landscape, few software producers have incentives to do the things necessary to improve, and/or believe they can spread the cost of improvement over a long period, IE: don't make the investment until the pain is too great.
foobiekr 6y ago
I am the same. I have a motto, actually, for more than a decade: the more software you add to something, the worse it gets. I coined it watching the robotic soda vending machine crash and reboot frequently.
renewiltord 6y ago
I prefer open-source tools because I know where the agency for pain lies: myself. With modern Rust and Go tooling you can download an application's source code, modify it, and compile it painlessly in half an hour. So why do I tolerate bugs in software like that? Because I know I can fix them. And I also know I won't always. Small gods have handed me tools to remake the world as I would see fit and I do not use them. Are they at fault for not having made the world as I would prefer? Or am I at fault for not using the tools? In any case, I've noticed a sort of dichotomy among users in their reaction to tools that fail. There are those who go "this tool sucks how can I do my work" and there are those who go "my work is what I want to do which tool can I use instead". The latter set get a lot more done. Once observing this I have attempted to modify my behaviour to be like the latter and have effectively become better.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > "my work is what I want to do which tool can I use instead" I can't wrap my head around this, could you explain further?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    For amusement sake I removed punctuation. The contrast is between people who find themselves unable to move when a tool sucks and people who just solve a problem. The latter just move on from tools that don't solve their problem or solve it poorly. If the problem is big enough they solve it themselves. They don't have to be engineers. They'll pay $100 / mo to solve it or hire a guy on Upwork to solve it or cobble something together on Zapier + Airtable. The thing is, the tool is insignificant. They don't really spend an appreciable amount of time on complaining about it because it's faster to stop using it.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      I can easily see myself going the latter course of action but I do question how sustainable it is. I wouldn't personally enter a business to make a bag of money and then quickly leave so I'd mix approaches. How about you?
Regenschirm 6y ago
My Windows 10 Desktop runs very well. My FreeNAS, Arch Linux and my Android phone as well. I think, we get paid because we are building new stuff and have to maintain shitty stuff. If my job would literaly just desigining it high level, clicking it together and then it works, no one would need me. Yes its frustrating sometimes. I would like to cure cancer instead of debugging why this update broke our system.
ghostpepper 6y ago
I know a product that can do more damage with an accidental backspace: the iMessage app for MacOS (Messages). If you're any sort of power user, you likely know that you can backspace by the word instead of the by the character, using Ctrl + BS on Linux or Cmd + BS on Mac. In the Messages app, the shorcut to delete your _entire chat history_ is also Cmd + BS, and it works even if your caret is in the text box. So if you type five words and then Cmd + BS six times, you will be prompted to delete your entire chat history. I do this almost every day. So far I've never compulsively hit return but I am dreading the day it happens.
- rovolo 6y ago
  Isn't alt-BS "delete word"? cmd-BS is "delete to beginning of line" for me.
- alsetmusic 6y ago
  Option-Delete is whole word delete.
- delinquenz 6y ago
  Gnome Notes has similar behavior: Whenever you use Ctrl + BS, the note you are currently writing it gets put into the trash, even though you just wanted to delete a word quickly. You can recover the note so it's not the worst possible behavior, but it still sucks.
- bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
  This always annoyed me but it looks like this behavior is gone in Big Sur. You can ⌘⌫ to your heart's content.
  - ghostpepper 6y ago
    It's funny how small a feature can make you want to upgrade.
- swiley 6y ago
  Coaca uses the Emacs style GNU readline keys in all the text fields, just use c-w.
systemvoltage 6y ago
Software has n^2 as many paths a piece of code can take depending on how it branches. Also, you cannot simulate the rest of the world (externalities). If I design a bracket for a TV mount, do you blame the bracket when someone hangs a 3000 kg bookcase on it? You’re expect software to be perfect, yet ignore the massive limits everything in the world has. Not saying there aren’t quality issues with software. I’m saying software development is really difficult.
asciimov 6y ago
> I don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is. Deaths, a lot of deaths. Software Engineering needs a PE type licensure and a union. We need a way to stand together to advocate for better working conditions, practices, and tools.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  I completely agree. But I fear that if this happens then the companies will look for ways to produce software with less friction compared to the now-stricter software development practice in general. And it would be "let's hire Indians for peanuts" all over again. Really not sure what's the way out of this corner that we've all collectively painted ourselves into.
- laretluval 6y ago
  What is the evidence that professional licensing would help? Even the most skilled programmers produce bugs. Professional licensing would only raise the barrier to entry for a well-paying job.
rglover 6y ago
Discipline and professional responsibility on the behalf of programmers, coupled with patience. Everyone is in such an irrational hurry, it's been built into the "culture" such that rushing and making messes is acceptable. And by extension, customers expect things to be shit so you don't get in much trouble for doing it. It's a feedback loop that only stops if companies (and individual programmers) start taking pride in craft > careless speed and money like they used to do back in the 50s/60s.
- robocat 6y ago
  > It's a feedback loop that only stops if companies (and individual programmers) start taking pride in craft Most programmers, and many companies, want to produce something of quality, well crafted. The drive for low quality kibble comes directly from consumers, and the inability/cost of judging value. A consumer can’t be expected to be a UI expert, and a slightly better UI might not drive sales because other factors are more important. I try to buy hardware with good UI, but I often make compromises for other factors.
  - rglover 6y ago
    That's a cop out for not doing the work. The choice is still in the hands of the people making the thing or offering the service.
com2kid 6y ago
> I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). My dishwasher, which has only buttons to select what to do during the next wash cycle, has a firmware bug. Sometimes when the door is closed, it will start one of the pumps. If I cycle "heated drying" on then off again, the pump will stop. I figured this out because, well, I've worked on firmware and I understand the how of how software can be stupid. After I learned to recognize watchdog resets, I started seeing them more and more often, and became even more terrified of how bad software is.
- tremon 6y ago
  After I learned to recognize watchdog resets, I started seeing them more and more often Yup, sounds like my TV. It's not even one of the smart ones, I was careful to avoid those. But once every few days, it stops responding to the remote control when performing some action (opening the EPG, switching channels). I then have to wait about ten seconds for the display to go dark and the TV to "reboot" itself, so I can continue channel surfing.
pbreit 6y ago
The thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is incompatible "upgrades".
Waterluvian 6y ago
My microwave will run for a split second if you hit the start button. I suspect it’s running the software to operate where the time variable is 0 seconds. That there’s no guard against 0 so it just runs until the counter part of the code runs. I’ve microwaved a burrito by mashing the start button hundreds of times.
m463 6y ago
> my freaking microwave oven control panel You mean where 99 is greater than 100?
Apofis 6y ago
Software is indeed downright hostile sometimes... it's gotten better with autosave... but your IDE, MS Word, or Photoshop crashing would sometimes cost you half a day of work if not more. It was infuriating and even discouraging sometimes until you learned the subconscious behavior of pressing ctrl-s all the time.

by efitz 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

Cobbler’s children have no shoes.

rootusrootus 6y ago

> accidentally backspace while not in a text field Thankfully that can be disabled, but I find it to be one of the most infuriating 'features' of Firefox. If it weren't something that could be turned off, it would be a deal killer all by itself.

TakerofVita 6y ago
Well, Chrome used to do this too until they removed it in 2016. Internet explorer does this. It was more of a default than a 'feature of Firefox'.
throwaway8941 6y ago
I didn't even know this "feature" was available on Firefox (despite using it since version 2). Turns out, it is only enabled on Windows: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.backspace_action http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.backspace_action Maybe it was copied from IE to keep "closer to the platform"?
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  It's definitely not limited to Windows. I am exclusively a MacOS user (for my workstation, at least) and I have had to disable it on any new Firefox install.
bhauer 6y ago
Also, in most normal web pages—at least those not using hideously over-complicated scripting—just pressing your "forward" button (Alt+Right, for example) will navigate forward and restore the edits you had in the form.

hrktb 6y ago

Doesn’t reality suck the same ? My gas car stinks, destroys the planet, needs yearly maintenance, crashes in everything the second I stop paying attention. My house decays days after day. Floors need constant cleaning, wall have holes from small impacts, paint contains inedible fragments and disperse nocive gas. Bees are building nests on my balcony and it’s definitely not what it was built for, nor where they should be. How can we tolerate such a life ?

happytoexplain 6y ago
I think the difference is that the entire software/hardware stack is a world created entirely by humans, untouched by "reality" for the purposes of all these annoyances, so it feels like we should be able to wrangle it better after so many decades. It's entirely our own creation, and we decide every iota of it, and yet it bites us (justifiably or not - turns out thousands of people each creating different layers of a gigantic state machine is hard to perfectly coordinate, but we may have been able to do better by now if we had been more thoughtful and patient throughout).
- ihadfun 6y ago
  We probably could make gas stink less just like we could fix that bug. The ROI just isn’t there.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Gas stinking is a feature, not a bug. It's a safety measure. Particularly when we're talking gas (and not gasoline), which is naturally odorless and made to stink on purpose.
- Out_of_Characte 6y ago
  Reality creeps in from us creating tech-utopia trough "legacy" systems where the internet, cryptography, multi-core architecture and full program isolation didn't exist yet. Software has a nasty habit of iterating on yesterday's ideas instead of rewriting for tomorrow. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it seems to be the path of least resistance thusfar.

julianlam 6y ago

> lose all the data you typed into a web form if you accidentally backspace while not in a text field, because it navigates off the page Nowadays, I would consider this a problem with the browser. How often does one navigate backwards with the backspace key? Recently, I had some doubts over whether or not I should clobber the native browser behaviour for "ctrl-s", but then I realized that nobody anywhere EVER saves a web page to disk... and if they really needed to, the browser toolbar is right there.

leetcrew 6y ago
I for one fully expect the backspace button to work if I do not currently have a text field focused. once you learn keybindings for an application, there's usually no way to perform that function as quickly/efficiently with a mouse. please do not break the conventional ones. ctrl-s is probably fine to break though. even when it does "save" the page, it rarely does so in a useful way.
- LolWolf 6y ago
  On Mac the other default for navigating backwards is Cmd-[, if that helps any! (It's also a default in many applications for navigating backwards in whatever sense the app may intend.) I don't use Windows other than for gaming, so I'm afraid I don't know if there are other shortcuts other than backspace.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    fyi, you can get pretty far on the basic shortcuts subbing ctrl for cmd.
  - jmholla 6y ago
    Alt-Left is back and Alt-Right is forward. Sadly, their equivalents on Mac are also for navigating to the beginning and end of the line so if you're in a text box you lose that control. Your alternative is handy. I wonder if it also works on Linux.

poulsbohemian 6y ago

>I don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is. What we've got here is a question of cost and choice. If my choices are all equally bad, IE: vendor one is not any worse than vendor two, then inertia or cost become determining factors. In terms of consumer software - consumers have been conditioned to have low expectations, and these costs are further reduced because prices are so often free or very low-cost. In regards to commercial-focused packages - again, so often we put up with it because the systems we're using are so complicated and specialized that the pool of options are limited and/or the domain is so complicated that problems are inevitable. So long as this is the landscape, few software producers have incentives to do the things necessary to improve, and/or believe they can spread the cost of improvement over a long period, IE: don't make the investment until the pain is too great.

foobiekr 6y ago

I am the same. I have a motto, actually, for more than a decade: the more software you add to something, the worse it gets. I coined it watching the robotic soda vending machine crash and reboot frequently.

renewiltord 6y ago

I prefer open-source tools because I know where the agency for pain lies: myself. With modern Rust and Go tooling you can download an application's source code, modify it, and compile it painlessly in half an hour. So why do I tolerate bugs in software like that? Because I know I can fix them. And I also know I won't always. Small gods have handed me tools to remake the world as I would see fit and I do not use them. Are they at fault for not having made the world as I would prefer? Or am I at fault for not using the tools? In any case, I've noticed a sort of dichotomy among users in their reaction to tools that fail. There are those who go "this tool sucks how can I do my work" and there are those who go "my work is what I want to do which tool can I use instead". The latter set get a lot more done. Once observing this I have attempted to modify my behaviour to be like the latter and have effectively become better.

pdimitar 6y ago
> "my work is what I want to do which tool can I use instead" I can't wrap my head around this, could you explain further?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  For amusement sake I removed punctuation. The contrast is between people who find themselves unable to move when a tool sucks and people who just solve a problem. The latter just move on from tools that don't solve their problem or solve it poorly. If the problem is big enough they solve it themselves. They don't have to be engineers. They'll pay $100 / mo to solve it or hire a guy on Upwork to solve it or cobble something together on Zapier + Airtable. The thing is, the tool is insignificant. They don't really spend an appreciable amount of time on complaining about it because it's faster to stop using it.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    I can easily see myself going the latter course of action but I do question how sustainable it is. I wouldn't personally enter a business to make a bag of money and then quickly leave so I'd mix approaches. How about you?

Regenschirm 6y ago

My Windows 10 Desktop runs very well. My FreeNAS, Arch Linux and my Android phone as well. I think, we get paid because we are building new stuff and have to maintain shitty stuff. If my job would literaly just desigining it high level, clicking it together and then it works, no one would need me. Yes its frustrating sometimes. I would like to cure cancer instead of debugging why this update broke our system.

ghostpepper 6y ago

I know a product that can do more damage with an accidental backspace: the iMessage app for MacOS (Messages). If you're any sort of power user, you likely know that you can backspace by the word instead of the by the character, using Ctrl + BS on Linux or Cmd + BS on Mac. In the Messages app, the shorcut to delete your _entire chat history_ is also Cmd + BS, and it works even if your caret is in the text box. So if you type five words and then Cmd + BS six times, you will be prompted to delete your entire chat history. I do this almost every day. So far I've never compulsively hit return but I am dreading the day it happens.

rovolo 6y ago
Isn't alt-BS "delete word"? cmd-BS is "delete to beginning of line" for me.
alsetmusic 6y ago
Option-Delete is whole word delete.
delinquenz 6y ago
Gnome Notes has similar behavior: Whenever you use Ctrl + BS, the note you are currently writing it gets put into the trash, even though you just wanted to delete a word quickly. You can recover the note so it's not the worst possible behavior, but it still sucks.
bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
This always annoyed me but it looks like this behavior is gone in Big Sur. You can ⌘⌫ to your heart's content.
- ghostpepper 6y ago
  It's funny how small a feature can make you want to upgrade.
swiley 6y ago
Coaca uses the Emacs style GNU readline keys in all the text fields, just use c-w.

systemvoltage 6y ago

Software has n^2 as many paths a piece of code can take depending on how it branches. Also, you cannot simulate the rest of the world (externalities). If I design a bracket for a TV mount, do you blame the bracket when someone hangs a 3000 kg bookcase on it? You’re expect software to be perfect, yet ignore the massive limits everything in the world has. Not saying there aren’t quality issues with software. I’m saying software development is really difficult.

asciimov 6y ago

> I don’t know what has to happen for people to stop tolerating software as it is. Deaths, a lot of deaths. Software Engineering needs a PE type licensure and a union. We need a way to stand together to advocate for better working conditions, practices, and tools.

pdimitar 6y ago
I completely agree. But I fear that if this happens then the companies will look for ways to produce software with less friction compared to the now-stricter software development practice in general. And it would be "let's hire Indians for peanuts" all over again. Really not sure what's the way out of this corner that we've all collectively painted ourselves into.
laretluval 6y ago
What is the evidence that professional licensing would help? Even the most skilled programmers produce bugs. Professional licensing would only raise the barrier to entry for a well-paying job.

rglover 6y ago

Discipline and professional responsibility on the behalf of programmers, coupled with patience. Everyone is in such an irrational hurry, it's been built into the "culture" such that rushing and making messes is acceptable. And by extension, customers expect things to be shit so you don't get in much trouble for doing it. It's a feedback loop that only stops if companies (and individual programmers) start taking pride in craft > careless speed and money like they used to do back in the 50s/60s.

robocat 6y ago
> It's a feedback loop that only stops if companies (and individual programmers) start taking pride in craft Most programmers, and many companies, want to produce something of quality, well crafted. The drive for low quality kibble comes directly from consumers, and the inability/cost of judging value. A consumer can’t be expected to be a UI expert, and a slightly better UI might not drive sales because other factors are more important. I try to buy hardware with good UI, but I often make compromises for other factors.
- rglover 6y ago
  That's a cop out for not doing the work. The choice is still in the hands of the people making the thing or offering the service.

com2kid 6y ago

> I find bugs in every software I use (my freaking microwave oven control panel!). My dishwasher, which has only buttons to select what to do during the next wash cycle, has a firmware bug. Sometimes when the door is closed, it will start one of the pumps. If I cycle "heated drying" on then off again, the pump will stop. I figured this out because, well, I've worked on firmware and I understand the how of how software can be stupid. After I learned to recognize watchdog resets, I started seeing them more and more often, and became even more terrified of how bad software is.

tremon 6y ago
After I learned to recognize watchdog resets, I started seeing them more and more often Yup, sounds like my TV. It's not even one of the smart ones, I was careful to avoid those. But once every few days, it stops responding to the remote control when performing some action (opening the EPG, switching channels). I then have to wait about ten seconds for the display to go dark and the TV to "reboot" itself, so I can continue channel surfing.

pbreit 6y ago

The thing that drives me absolutely bonkers is incompatible "upgrades".

Waterluvian 6y ago

My microwave will run for a split second if you hit the start button. I suspect it’s running the software to operate where the time variable is 0 seconds. That there’s no guard against 0 so it just runs until the counter part of the code runs. I’ve microwaved a burrito by mashing the start button hundreds of times.

m463 6y ago

> my freaking microwave oven control panel You mean where 99 is greater than 100?

Apofis 6y ago

Software is indeed downright hostile sometimes... it's gotten better with autosave... but your IDE, MS Word, or Photoshop crashing would sometimes cost you half a day of work if not more. It was infuriating and even discouraging sometimes until you learned the subconscious behavior of pressing ctrl-s all the time.