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I was thinking about all of this while writing my question. I agree: I can just switch to another app. IF I find a better app, but can you find such a better ap

I was thinking about all of this while writing my question. I agree: I can just switch to another app. IF I find a better app, but can you find such a better app at all? I think that my question is more about this (which is resonated in many other comments): in general, the incentives given to developers by companies / society does not align with better quality software. At the contrary: quality costs time and money, it feels like it's not motivated financially. Still, I think that this is somewhat corrupted. A beautiful, comfortable, durable chair is better than a ugly chair that breaks after 1 year. Still, probably the ugly chair will have a way larger financial margin. Guess what companies are going to produce? I guess it's yet another demonstration that no matter how perfect a system is, it won't set people free from morals, from taking their own responsibility to make the world a better place. Beauty and good will always need to be fought for.

prometheon1 5y ago
In many cases there is a better app, but we still can't use it because of other reasons. Slack or Teams? I've never heard anybody say they prefer Teams, yet it is used everywhere. Probably because of lower direct costs and it integrates with all the other Microsoft stuff and active directory automatically. Maybe if we could measure happiness and productivity costs it would turn out to be much more expensive. WhatsApp or Signal? If you value privacy Signal is definitely better, but if none of your friends is willing to use it that doesn't matter a lot.
matkoniecz 5y ago
> but can you find such a better app at all In this case - probably yes, and even making own one is feasible. It is not as bad case as with mobile OS where making own is infeasible and among existing ones all are terrible. You can only select flavour of terribleness. > in general, the incentives given to developers by companies / society does not align with better quality software Exactly > Still, probably the ugly chair will have a way larger financial margin. Guess what companies are going to produce? Ideally there would be both company producing cheap ones (IKEA) and ones producing masterpieces (carpenter making one-off furniture on request) and anything in range. > Beauty and good will always need to be fought for. ++

prometheon1 5y ago

In many cases there is a better app, but we still can't use it because of other reasons. Slack or Teams? I've never heard anybody say they prefer Teams, yet it is used everywhere. Probably because of lower direct costs and it integrates with all the other Microsoft stuff and active directory automatically. Maybe if we could measure happiness and productivity costs it would turn out to be much more expensive. WhatsApp or Signal? If you value privacy Signal is definitely better, but if none of your friends is willing to use it that doesn't matter a lot.

matkoniecz 5y ago

> but can you find such a better app at all In this case - probably yes, and even making own one is feasible. It is not as bad case as with mobile OS where making own is infeasible and among existing ones all are terrible. You can only select flavour of terribleness. > in general, the incentives given to developers by companies / society does not align with better quality software Exactly > Still, probably the ugly chair will have a way larger financial margin. Guess what companies are going to produce? Ideally there would be both company producing cheap ones (IKEA) and ones producing masterpieces (carpenter making one-off furniture on request) and anything in range. > Beauty and good will always need to be fought for. ++