4 ms·

> It's easy to forget how bad software was back in the '90s > Modern software is in fact more reliable than older software. Putting this as "90s vs now" is bo

> It's easy to forget how bad software was back in the '90s > Modern software is in fact more reliable than older software. Putting this as "90s vs now" is borderline strawman IMO. I genuinely believe the peak in terms of performance and polish was somewhere in the early-mid 2000s; developers of the time had experienced the 90s and true shortage of CPU time and other resources. The mindset was still alive, even if PCs had gotten very powerful by 2005. Mid-to-late 2000s mark the start of mass webification and mobilification of software. "Mobile eats the world" and "nobody wants to install software." In my experience it's been downhill from there; software started being developed with a completely different mindset and completely different approach. During the early phase of this transition, your bottleneck was invariably network I/O; so developers didn't really need to give a crap about CPU cycles or RAM. Lack of UI polish could be blamed on the web being what it is, a document platform coerced into becoming an application delivery platform. Most of the early "app web" applications were truly horrific compared to "native" software, but no matter, the web was considered more accessible and a better platform for developers. And users didn't have to INSTALL SOFTWARE! Woohoo. Of course the constraints are not the same today, but the original mindset that held until early 2000s is long gone. For example, instead of trying to stick to your platform's long established UI conventions as you would if developing Windows software in 2000, designers nowadays are more concerned about branding and making up their own experience; every "web app" looks and feels and behaves different. Now as for reliability, I can't say whether the mid 2000s were worse or better than today. 90s software definitely had a lot of issues, but I had no trouble running Windows XP SP2 with months of uptime. The nature of software failures has changed, and today you have less crashes (though they're still there), but on the other hand, I regularly see applications being confused about their state, being stuck trying to do something that evidently doesn't succeed, infinite spinners, "whoops, something went wronk", "we can't serve your request at this time" and "please reload and log in again." If we consider all these to be failures, then I think software in general isn't any more reliable than it used to be. Updates are another interesting phenomenon; back in the day, I wasn't forced to update. I never lost work or had to reboot and restart everything because of updates.

horsawlarway 5y ago
I just want to point out that you're saying windows ME was the peak of software performance and polish. And following that - I call complete and utter bollocks.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  Did I really say that? From any given era, you can find gems and garbage.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    You could almost even say that the past is just like today! :D It turns out it's not all roses and bliss. It's basically the same half-baked, mostly unusable, bucket of dirt you dig through to find the diamonds. But everyone only ever remembers the diamonds.
    - foxfluff 5y ago
      No-one said it's all roses and bliss. My argument is that mainstream software was, on average, more performant and more polished (and not considerably more buggy or unstable; possibly less buggy due to being less complex) than it is today. I was relatively happy using mostly the same software that everyone else was using too. Today, not so much; I find most mainstream software unbearable, repulsive, slow, full of annoying quirks & rough edges. I'm not happy using it so I don't. For me it's a completely different era. I don't know if anyone is measuring this objectively, and I assume not. So we might not ever be able to say whether the claim is objectively true or just my subjective experience. But it's not fair to dismiss the whole argument by mischaracterizing it.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  The GP actually praised Windows XP SP2, not Windows Me. Now one could argue that in some ways, Windows XP was a regression and Windows 2000 was the peak. But not Windows Me; that's widely regarded as the worst of the doomed 9x line.

horsawlarway 5y ago

I just want to point out that you're saying windows ME was the peak of software performance and polish. And following that - I call complete and utter bollocks.

foxfluff 5y ago
Did I really say that? From any given era, you can find gems and garbage.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  You could almost even say that the past is just like today! :D It turns out it's not all roses and bliss. It's basically the same half-baked, mostly unusable, bucket of dirt you dig through to find the diamonds. But everyone only ever remembers the diamonds.
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    No-one said it's all roses and bliss. My argument is that mainstream software was, on average, more performant and more polished (and not considerably more buggy or unstable; possibly less buggy due to being less complex) than it is today. I was relatively happy using mostly the same software that everyone else was using too. Today, not so much; I find most mainstream software unbearable, repulsive, slow, full of annoying quirks & rough edges. I'm not happy using it so I don't. For me it's a completely different era. I don't know if anyone is measuring this objectively, and I assume not. So we might not ever be able to say whether the claim is objectively true or just my subjective experience. But it's not fair to dismiss the whole argument by mischaracterizing it.
mwcampbell 5y ago
The GP actually praised Windows XP SP2, not Windows Me. Now one could argue that in some ways, Windows XP was a regression and Windows 2000 was the peak. But not Windows Me; that's widely regarded as the worst of the doomed 9x line.