14 ms·

Where did software go wrong? (2020)

146 points by cute_boi 4y ago

FrankWilhoit 4y ago
Where software went wrong was in attempting to automate human processes as found, instead of as (very drastically) simplified in order to (A) take advantage of the things machines are better at and (B) be maintainable.
arminiusreturns 4y ago
Copyleft foss for the user, this is the future.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
throwaway5959 4y ago
hulitu 4y ago
" We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use" Then why is it increasingly difficult for humans to _use_ a computer. And no, Android and iOS devices are not computers, just like the washing machine is not a computer. They are toys.
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  Because computers lost the war against phone/tablets and so software is oriented towards phones/tablets. And the computer software that did survive has to do rent seeking (SaaS) because investors love it.
  - subradios 4y ago
    Investors love SaaS because customers love SaaS. Every day they pay for o365 instead of figuring out libreoffice. The alternatives exist, but they are less fully featured, less well integrated, and harder to learn. Why? Because all those extra niceties cost money that Microsoft can pay programmers to work on instead of hacking on arduinos or whatever else they'd do in their free time. SaaS is just patreon that works. You pay the organization that builds it money every month, and you get a constant stream of updates and support.
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      The office pricing is pretty attractive, especially for a family plan. $120 a year, or $10 a month, for up to 6 people. They throw in 1 Terrabyte of cloud storage/person and email, and you can get the full office app download (what I use) as well as the browser-based versions that are cloud hosted. You can save documents locally or on the cloud, it's up to you. I got it and it works for our family, where we have both mac and PC members. One of us is working on some chapters for a technical book that is being done on windows, whereas three of us use a mac, and it was the desire to have a common office suite and share documents especially with non-technical family members that made it work out. One of my requirements was decent foreign language support and also right to left text, and I'm a heavy user of excel as well. Depending on how much you value your time, it only takes a few hours of frustration working with the opensource alternatives before it makes sense to sign up. At the same time, I'm glad that free office alternatives exist to put competitive pressure on Microsoft and to give options for Linux users or those for whom open source is important. Prior to getting the 365 subscription, I used the openoffice flavors for many years at home and the MS office when I needed to write documents at work. Now at work I use gsuite/wikis and never touch office, but have come to really appreciate it for private use. Something about never using it at work totally changed how I look at MS Office -- like a pall was removed and I realized this is pretty good software.
    - projektfu 4y ago
      Less fully featured is also defined by the features in the flagship product, for which alternatives are always playing catch-up. Many of Excel's features are mis-features but not implementing them leads to incompatibility.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  Washing machines are toys? Why?
  - jujube3 4y ago
    I guess this is why they include all the warnings against climbing in. (Do not do this, you will die)
hourago 4y ago
> Q: What does software do? > A: It produces and reproduces capital. > Q: Who does software benefit? > A: People who own capital. This makes a lot of sense. If we want better software (less dark patterns, less loot boxes, etc.) we need to change society rewards. If the companies that earn more profits are the ones that exploit human weaknesses then the world resources will be dedicated to them. If we want better software, or even less software and more other things, society needs to reward those activities. If it pays more to work for a crypto exchange or the next data-stalking start-up than to cure cancer then most of the knowledge people will work on them. Governments exists to regulate society and set rewards and punishments, we currently reward data gathering so it is what we get. I can imagine a future were more resources are dedicated to extract value from people and less to produce products and services. And it is a red queen race. More resources call for more resources to be used, like an arms race it has no end unless there is a society will to end it.
- TuringNYC 4y ago
  There is an old joke that the US government cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas because it would "cost too much" primarily. Yes, a lot of cap-ex, but it would have also employed an army of Physics and other PhDs (2000+ staff.) The cost was in the single digit billions. The joke goes that all those PhDs had to find work, and found well-paying jobs on Wall St, created exotic derivatives, and blew up the world. Then we paid hundreds of billions to solve the 2008 financial crisis.
  - jfkfmgmvmvm 4y ago
    $2 billion had already been spent with only a tunnel bored. Officials said it needed $12B more. It was a money pit. Many scholars were against it.
  - tawaycrypto 4y ago
    Not only that developed countries/NGOs blame developing countries for investing in science related projects. They think money is wasted. My country gets this crap all the time.
  - 4y ago
mikewarot 4y ago
We went wrong in the 1970s, when a stripped down clone of Multics (without capability based security -- CabSec) grew in popularity and outgrew it. That basic lack of a system that can allow the user to securely and transparently manage what resources are to be given to a program is at the root of all the evil (mediocrity?) that follows. Imagine you have a wallet, and you aren't allowed to take coins or bills out of it, you simply must hand the whole thing to someone else, and trust they only withdraw the right amount. This is what computers are like without CabSec. In the 1970s, the personal computer started to become popular. Because home computer users didn't share systems, or network them, and data was stored on write protectable floppy disks, the lack of CabSec wasn't an issue. Think of each floppy disk as a separate "wallet" from the above It really wasn't a problem in corporate settings, or even in the early years of shareware, etc. Users were technical enough to know what data was going where, and manage things appropriately. Most locations still only had separate computers, and used diskettes to move data, via sneaker-net. It's when you got to installing software that things started deteriorating. You suddenly couldn't really have a bunch of separate areas to store your data and programs on. It all became one all-important "wallet". Then the internet came, and internet access became the standard, instead of internet connections. This moved things further out of the control of the users. It's all worse in each iteration, now everything is out of your hardware, and into a single "2FA" system that is based around your smartphone. If you lose it, you could lose everything. It's the worst possible single "wallet".
DerekL 4y ago
Title need (2020).
redmen 4y ago
pfoof 4y ago
> We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use. No, we write code under pressure with deadlines for yesterday, multiplying technical debt and making another person who will inherit our project question their life choices.
monero-xmr 4y ago
> Startups love to save the world, but look at the state of the world now—is this what it’s like to be saved? Is the world even a little bit better because of startups like Instagram, Uber, and Peloton? Startups are spaces of remarkable innovation, and they are experts at channeling the multivoicedness of code—just look at the network of voices that GitLab channels (visualized below). But under capitalism, these voices are distorted and constrained, and they cry “growth, growth!” as venture capitalists and founders demand user acquisition, market share, and revenue—in a word, they demand access to capitalist accumulation. Imagine a world where everyone starts with exactly the same resources and access to identical education. There are no parental differences. Even in this scenario, because of the variability in humans, some will be predisposed to save money while others spend it right away, some will study hard while others spend all day hanging out with friends, some will be natural leaders that organize people and others will be followers. There is no such thing as equality - none. No two people are equal and no system, even an absolute authoritarian nightmare, can enforce equality. Inequality is natural and expected. Capitalism is the natural order - it's an emergent phenomenon. People save money, invest it into other good ideas, they get more money, they reinvest it, and on and on. Eventually giant pools of money form to reduce risk, smooth returns, and enable professional investors to act on behalf of less-sophisticated ones. This results in pension funds, sovereign wealth, and a small number of individually rich people. The best you can do is forcibly take money from people and businesses and redistribute it. The best and fairest way to do this IMO is a straightforwards flat tax, but the tax code always and everywhere results in a Gordian Knot of favored industries, tax breaks, arbitrary taxes to attack some perceived enemy, and on and on. There will never be a permanent revolution against capitalism, just temporary fits like in Cuba and Russia that eventually die off. Capitalism is a reflection of human wants - the innate desire to own your own stuff. Everything else fans out from the fundamental desire for private property.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  The entirety of human history until the late medieval/early medieval period, all those hundreds of thousands of years existed without capitalism despite resource inequality. It can be hard to see beyond the dominant social structures we see around us every day, but don't confuse them for inevitabilities. Things will eventually change and whatever replaces the current structures will seem just as obviously inevitable to our descendents.
kellyharsh 4y ago
[dead]
camdenlock 4y ago
What a dreadful Marxist way of viewing something so dynamic and interesting, something that has and continues to delight many of us, not to mention provide us with the means of living incredibly lavish lives by the standards of our forebears. Software deserves much better than this myopic nonsense.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  care to be more specific? for example, imagine how much MORE comfortable and wealthy we would be if all productive activity was channeled straight back into public projects, instead of through the business owners and then ostensibly downward?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - samarthr1 4y ago
    Well, what will end up happening is, instead of the money going to business owners, and then ostensibly downwards, it will go to the government officials and then ostensibly downward. Either way, there will be corruption and losses. The question then arises, which is better off on average for society, and which is better on average for _me_. If the two align, I vote for what is better for society.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - eat_veggies 4y ago
      it's ok we don't need government officials, or even money for them to take, for that matter. we can self organize and associate freely. check this out https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-ana...
      - dmitriid 4y ago
jongjong 4y ago
Our monetary system is designed to facilitate unlimited compounding interest and returns; this necessarily leads to centralization and monopolization which leads to a monoculture across all industries. I wouldn't be surprised if the same force which drives monoculture in agriculture is also responsible for monoculture in the software industry. The winners (first movers) tend to keep on winning - They just have to get it right the first time and after that they will keep winning most of the time regardless of what they do; whatever they push out into the markets. I think it's wrong to say that software is capital but software and the people who use it certainly follow capital very closely. Why do so many people use Uber? Because the investors are/were subsidizing the rides (making them cheaper). Why do people use Apple iPhones? Because it allows people to use money-saving apps like Uber. Why do people use Google search? Because its result pages are loaded with products which are subsidized by big investor funding like Uber. Why did Windows become so popular? Because all the big investor money was being spent on building games and programs for Windows (and also, big-money IBM gave them that huge contract). The infinitely compounding wealth of the richest investors decides everything. Most peoples' decisions regarding which software they use is determined by where the big money is being spent. Those who are getting all the big money can afford to lower their profit margins and the monetary surplus can facilitate an entire ecosystem to grow around them. These sometimes poorly designed but well-funded software systems and ecosystems starve funding from better alternative ecosystems and thus starves them of developers which starves them of users. On one side you have extremely wealthy companies which can sell or lease software solutions which are very cheap and low-margin (because these companies have so much surplus capital coming in from other channels) and on the other side, you have poor consumers who need to squeeze every penny to get by. This is the recipe for a winner-takes all economy. Just look at cryptocurrency; almost all the developers are working on Bitcoin or Ethereum. Not because they're the best (they're both horrible to develop for and integrate with) - They're simply able to attract developers because that's where the big investor money is and developers and their users are just constantly chasing the money with laser precision. Also, underlying all this, there is a constant force of peer-pressure which subtly nudges people towards solutions which are backed by big money. Big money can buy both respect and trust.
- subradios 4y ago
maria2 4y ago
I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what software is, so it's a bit premature to say where it went wrong. The author says that "Software is not creative." This may be true, but software is a creation. And currently it is created in the most crude and rudimentary way possible. There are a lot of creative people out there. Writing software today is too hard. It takes too much knowledge and too much work. If writing a game was as easy as creating a TikTok video, imagine how much creativity would exist within the realm of software.
- mattpallissard 4y ago
  The two current approaches are no/low code which has been around in some aspect for a while now and ai/ML generated code which is young. I wonder if there will be another approach or if those approaches will get polished to a workable state.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    > The two current approaches are no/low code which has been around in some aspect for a while now That has been around for at least thirty-five years. If it were going to lead anywhere, it would have, by now. > and ai/ML generated code which is young. I'm expecting more of a repeat than a difference.
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  > I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what software is... Yes, agreed. Software is that magic dust that produces behavior. It's the technology that enables things to react to their environments. All life runs a form of software, you could say. Software will only increase in prevalence and importance as society continues to demand machines to behave in a certain way. It strikes me that articles like this are more gripes against the development process of software rather than the end product. The end product did not "go wrong" and is in fact at the peak of complexity and usefulness, and this peak will continue to get higher and higher until we reach the singularity.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  i don't think the author is saying the process of software is not creative, but that software as software is not creative. software is not creative because it's static. any new data consumed by software isn't reincorporated into a new repetition of the software itself, but simply regurgitated slightly wrong. though, i actually disagree, it's just incorporated by the desiring-machines creating the software. :) pegging "software" to a static entity i think is flawed as it is in fact always changing, even in a simple machine-producing-machine system of a CD pipeline.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
I am writing a book that posits software is a form of literacy and I love the concept of commits as a "conversation" between authors. I think we probably will end up treating software as legal text (it will likely be as impactful) and the changes that will wrought are interesting ...
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  I like to view software as pure thought that happens to be encoded in a weird, formal structure, very much analogous to writing and poetry. It's been a very useful perspective for me in a lot of ways and the parallels are substantial. It also implies a much vaster realm of "software thinking" filled with things like uxntal and colorforth than currently exists in the world. Instead, most people (myself included) spend the majority of our time writing corporate memos in passive voice.
- RunSet 4y ago
  > I am writing a book that posits software is a form of literacy The meaning of "computer literacy" is further diluted with each passing day. An equivalence: Imagine if the meaning of "literacy" was reduced to being able to use the Taco Bell menu to place an order, given the assistance of accompanying illustrations. I recommend reading this if you have not already: https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles/should-the-computer-teach-the-student-or-vice-versa/ https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles...
forthorbor 4y ago
This is a really good read, I only wish they covered more about open source as that is in conflict with their conclusion around software being capital.
hsn915 4y ago
I have no idea what this essay is tryig to say, but it seems to be sort based on leftist/marxist premises? I mean, look at this: - He thought the internet was going to get rid of "hateful" ideologies, to which I say, "lol what?" - He thought Trump tweeting things is proof that software is gone wrong - He complains about "Capital" at the end of the essay The whole essay seems to be a typical incomprehensible leftist terminology filled mumbo jumbo. I remember reading this kind of material when I took "Communications 101" in University, where nothing ever made sense. I guess I'm surprised this essay has so much engagement on HN. There are many things wrong with software and the startup culture; this essay doesn't even remotely touch any actually substantial point what those things are.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  Yeah, this was really disappointing - things have gone very, very wrong with software, but this author is either unaware or uninterested in any of the actual reasons.
nathias 4y ago
Software didn't go 'wrong', people just decided monopolies are a good thing and stopped braking them up.
- bombolo 4y ago
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Because we have better methods now. Rather than break up Apple, the EU knows they can just force Apple to do the right things when they don't naturally happen. We don't need the free market of 100 alternative products to have user respecting software. We can just legally mandate it. Right now the software and products we have are extremely good and keep getting better. Tech companies aren't just sitting on a legacy of old stuff collecting rent, they are actively investing and keeping their status by simply being the best.
  - nathias 4y ago
    it's this kind of stupidity that the planet must now pay the price for
- gorjusborg 4y ago
  Yes, and in the U.S., corporations are legally people (with outsized influence due to their sums of money). So said another way, 'corporations decided monopolies are a good thing'.
yshklarov 4y ago
> We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use. Prime example of a "deepity".
_p4lt 4y ago
What is the point of this? To me this reads like contentless wordplay, some random software-insider negativity with a bit of anti-capitalism thrown in. I didn't really find any interesting points worth engaging with either positively or negatively. TBH I would have just downvoted this if I could. If you're scanning comments before reading, don't bother with it.
- lucidguppy 4y ago
  When I start to see walls of text I power scroll through the article to see headings and conclusions. I can quickly see if the article is written with me as the audience or if someone else is the intended reader. If you find the right technologies - starting up a company to do whatever "should" be done has never been easier. Software is capital? I don't even get this at all... why shouldn't startups be rewarded if they produce something people want? This article is written for people way smarter than me. I don't know who he's trying to convince.
  - kbelder 4y ago
    >This article is written for people way smarter than me It's really, really not.
- tezza 4y ago
  +1. The article is disappointing throughout because its purpose seems to be posturing and name checking trendy learned stuff. Circular logic abounds. Is it angry with code or capitalism or the human condition? You get the impression all three. Solutions? never looked at It also ends with the ultimate cop out: Q: What is the solution? (paraphrased) A: I don’t know
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > I would have just downvoted this I don't flag much on here, but I flagged this one.
onion-soup 4y ago
Micro Services
- amelius 4y ago
  A modern Linux system works as a bunch of microservices (systemd). Which is quite successful, so this can't be it.
strken 4y ago
Software in its natural state is not scarce, is freely copyable instead of transferable, and is not capital; just like the ability to start a fire or shear a sheep are not capital. Ownership over software is scarce and transferable. The thing that lets you use software as productive capital is the exclusive right to it. That right is entirely manmade.
- argentier 4y ago
  That's code rather than software. Just because you copied the cookbook doesn't mean you now own a restaurant. Especially in compute-intensive activities such as neural nets/ML, capital is very much a factor.
martincmartin 4y ago
(2020)
friend_and_foe 4y ago
I think all these types of questions and statements do a good job assuming a disconnect between software and the real world, between humans and the systems we build. If I build a bridge and it collapses, nobody asks "where did bridge building go wrong?" If I cut corners on a bridge and it doesnt collapse, and create a culture of doing this such that other builders also do it, if I normalize misaligned incentives to those that pay me rather than those that drive on my bridge, and then they all start to collapse, we don't talk about bridge building failing us all. We talk about what we did, our behavior and what it caused. The state of software, computing, social media, information availability, human rights on the internet, these are all because we, as in you and me, built something we knew was wrong for a paycheck, or at the very least overrepresented our skillset for a paycheck and delivered crap and swindled our employers and their customers. And questions like "where did software go wrong" are our way of passing the buck to a non entity, it's cowardly, it's pathetic, and every one of us, you and me, should take responsibility for what we have done, I mean literally, specifically, not some general collective truism, if not publicly at least when we look in the mirror by ourselves, and understand our role in the current state of the world, and either decide not to do it anymore or accept what we are.
heresie-dabord 4y ago
The OP's complaint: > The magic disappeared and our optimism has since faded. > Our websites are slow and insecure; > our startups are creepy and unprofitable; > our president Tweets hate speech; > we don’t trust our social media apps, webcams, or voting machines. > And in the era of coronavirus quarantining, we’re realizing just how inadequate the Internet turned out to be as a home of Mind. That's a mixed bag of laments about products and sociological phenomena. People using computers and software were supposed to solve all these problems? > this mess, this tool-assisted speedrun of accumulation and exploitation This is all of human history. It's a hard course in the frequent application of inhumane principles and failure to understand scale and sustainability. "Software" was never going to change human nature. > Where did it all go wrong? So, the OP's question itself is, at best, not an unworthy question but an incomplete question. The software industry was never going to "go right". You may as well ask "where human society went wrong". Or whether human society has ever gone right, at scale.
- throwaway9870 4y ago
  The glass is half-full or half-empty. We have websites and can do things I never dreamed of as a child. When I had to do product research when I was younger it meant going to a book store and pursuing a rack of magazines. Google was a startup, Amazon was a startup. I would not call them unprofitable. Back when I was young you had companies like SUN, SGI, MIPS as startups, where are they now? Our president tweets? Direct communication to people without it being filtered by N layers? I bet every president has said hate speech behinds the scene at some point. Now the curtain is being lifted. I consider that good, actually, incredible. If you think sitting in your house alone during COVID would have been better without having the internet, then just turn it off. But I don't know anybody who came to that conclusion. In the modern world people seem to criticize things that are not perfect. That is fine to notice those things, but to let them sway your entire outlook is unhealthy and, in many cases, wrong. Can we do better? Yes, I think so. But I don't think we are doing nearly as bad as the picture you paint. I think the biggest problem is that the Internet accelerated change to a speed that people are not accustomed to. It might take a couple generations to adapt.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> Software is for people It is also by people. History proves we are pretty flawed bunch. We bat around .500. Software is also a means. It is not an ends. It's misguided to expect a means to miraculously accomplish some ends. The ends is a function of the people utilizing the means. Did I mean we are a known to be flawed bunch?
borbulon 4y ago
> Software is at once a field of study, an industry, a career, a process of production, and a process of consumption—and only then a body of computer code. This is so, so, so, so true. It's rarely how software is implemented, though.
jrochkind1 4y ago
There's a paragraph in the middle that is hard to read because it keeps changing and overwriting itself in an animated fashion. Is that intentional, or is something going wrong with my browser? Directly above the video preceding the "Who does software benefit" heading.
jrochkind1 4y ago
> But we can break this pattern; we can find our own answers to those questions, and if it’s up to us, the answer does not need to be that answer we’ve been taught, capital. Can we, without changing the environment we are embedded in, without changing capitalism? Under capitalism, all economic activity is increasingly subsumed by quest for increasing capital -- and under neo-liberal capitalism, all activity is increasingly economic activity, to better serve the quest for increasing capital (to open up more places for investing capital). I think we can and should resist it, that's fine. I think it's good to recognize and point out what we're losing, and to urge resistance, as OP does, I'm not critisizing OP at all. It's just to have any chance of success, we probably have to talk about the system we are embedded within and how to change that too, not just limit ourselves to software production as an imaginary closed system. A different tack: I suppose for software production to escape becoming nothing more than capital intended to benefit people who own capital while reproducing capital -- software production would have to try not to be an economic activity, since all economic activity in our system ends up the former. Software production that was not economic activity was the original fantasy of many involved in original open source software production, I think literally exactly that. That... is now how it's gone. Why not? Would be a starting point for extending the locus of focus from software production on it's own to the social-political-cultural system of capitalism it is embedded in.
wellanyway 4y ago
Quoting Soviet philosophers, Marx... Making no actual claims or actually proposing to do anything except "capitalism bad". Typical left "wisdom".

146 points by cute_boi 4y ago

Where software went wrong was in attempting to automate human processes as found, instead of as (very drastically) simplified in order to (A) take advantage of the things machines are better at and (B) be maintainable.

arminiusreturns 4y ago

Copyleft foss for the user, this is the future.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

throwaway5959 4y ago

hulitu 4y ago

" We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use" Then why is it increasingly difficult for humans to _use_ a computer. And no, Android and iOS devices are not computers, just like the washing machine is not a computer. They are toys.

maximus-decimus 4y ago
Because computers lost the war against phone/tablets and so software is oriented towards phones/tablets. And the computer software that did survive has to do rent seeking (SaaS) because investors love it.
- subradios 4y ago
  Investors love SaaS because customers love SaaS. Every day they pay for o365 instead of figuring out libreoffice. The alternatives exist, but they are less fully featured, less well integrated, and harder to learn. Why? Because all those extra niceties cost money that Microsoft can pay programmers to work on instead of hacking on arduinos or whatever else they'd do in their free time. SaaS is just patreon that works. You pay the organization that builds it money every month, and you get a constant stream of updates and support.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    The office pricing is pretty attractive, especially for a family plan. $120 a year, or $10 a month, for up to 6 people. They throw in 1 Terrabyte of cloud storage/person and email, and you can get the full office app download (what I use) as well as the browser-based versions that are cloud hosted. You can save documents locally or on the cloud, it's up to you. I got it and it works for our family, where we have both mac and PC members. One of us is working on some chapters for a technical book that is being done on windows, whereas three of us use a mac, and it was the desire to have a common office suite and share documents especially with non-technical family members that made it work out. One of my requirements was decent foreign language support and also right to left text, and I'm a heavy user of excel as well. Depending on how much you value your time, it only takes a few hours of frustration working with the opensource alternatives before it makes sense to sign up. At the same time, I'm glad that free office alternatives exist to put competitive pressure on Microsoft and to give options for Linux users or those for whom open source is important. Prior to getting the 365 subscription, I used the openoffice flavors for many years at home and the MS office when I needed to write documents at work. Now at work I use gsuite/wikis and never touch office, but have come to really appreciate it for private use. Something about never using it at work totally changed how I look at MS Office -- like a pall was removed and I realized this is pretty good software.
  - projektfu 4y ago
    Less fully featured is also defined by the features in the flagship product, for which alternatives are always playing catch-up. Many of Excel's features are mis-features but not implementing them leads to incompatibility.
Joker_vD 4y ago
Washing machines are toys? Why?
- jujube3 4y ago
  I guess this is why they include all the warnings against climbing in. (Do not do this, you will die)

hourago 4y ago

> Q: What does software do? > A: It produces and reproduces capital. > Q: Who does software benefit? > A: People who own capital. This makes a lot of sense. If we want better software (less dark patterns, less loot boxes, etc.) we need to change society rewards. If the companies that earn more profits are the ones that exploit human weaknesses then the world resources will be dedicated to them. If we want better software, or even less software and more other things, society needs to reward those activities. If it pays more to work for a crypto exchange or the next data-stalking start-up than to cure cancer then most of the knowledge people will work on them. Governments exists to regulate society and set rewards and punishments, we currently reward data gathering so it is what we get. I can imagine a future were more resources are dedicated to extract value from people and less to produce products and services. And it is a red queen race. More resources call for more resources to be used, like an arms race it has no end unless there is a society will to end it.

TuringNYC 4y ago
There is an old joke that the US government cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas because it would "cost too much" primarily. Yes, a lot of cap-ex, but it would have also employed an army of Physics and other PhDs (2000+ staff.) The cost was in the single digit billions. The joke goes that all those PhDs had to find work, and found well-paying jobs on Wall St, created exotic derivatives, and blew up the world. Then we paid hundreds of billions to solve the 2008 financial crisis.
- jfkfmgmvmvm 4y ago
  $2 billion had already been spent with only a tunnel bored. Officials said it needed $12B more. It was a money pit. Many scholars were against it.
- tawaycrypto 4y ago
  Not only that developed countries/NGOs blame developing countries for investing in science related projects. They think money is wasted. My country gets this crap all the time.
- 4y ago

mikewarot 4y ago

We went wrong in the 1970s, when a stripped down clone of Multics (without capability based security -- CabSec) grew in popularity and outgrew it. That basic lack of a system that can allow the user to securely and transparently manage what resources are to be given to a program is at the root of all the evil (mediocrity?) that follows. Imagine you have a wallet, and you aren't allowed to take coins or bills out of it, you simply must hand the whole thing to someone else, and trust they only withdraw the right amount. This is what computers are like without CabSec. In the 1970s, the personal computer started to become popular. Because home computer users didn't share systems, or network them, and data was stored on write protectable floppy disks, the lack of CabSec wasn't an issue. Think of each floppy disk as a separate "wallet" from the above It really wasn't a problem in corporate settings, or even in the early years of shareware, etc. Users were technical enough to know what data was going where, and manage things appropriately. Most locations still only had separate computers, and used diskettes to move data, via sneaker-net. It's when you got to installing software that things started deteriorating. You suddenly couldn't really have a bunch of separate areas to store your data and programs on. It all became one all-important "wallet". Then the internet came, and internet access became the standard, instead of internet connections. This moved things further out of the control of the users. It's all worse in each iteration, now everything is out of your hardware, and into a single "2FA" system that is based around your smartphone. If you lose it, you could lose everything. It's the worst possible single "wallet".

DerekL 4y ago

Title need (2020).

redmen 4y ago

pfoof 4y ago

> We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use. No, we write code under pressure with deadlines for yesterday, multiplying technical debt and making another person who will inherit our project question their life choices.

monero-xmr 4y ago

> Startups love to save the world, but look at the state of the world now—is this what it’s like to be saved? Is the world even a little bit better because of startups like Instagram, Uber, and Peloton? Startups are spaces of remarkable innovation, and they are experts at channeling the multivoicedness of code—just look at the network of voices that GitLab channels (visualized below). But under capitalism, these voices are distorted and constrained, and they cry “growth, growth!” as venture capitalists and founders demand user acquisition, market share, and revenue—in a word, they demand access to capitalist accumulation. Imagine a world where everyone starts with exactly the same resources and access to identical education. There are no parental differences. Even in this scenario, because of the variability in humans, some will be predisposed to save money while others spend it right away, some will study hard while others spend all day hanging out with friends, some will be natural leaders that organize people and others will be followers. There is no such thing as equality - none. No two people are equal and no system, even an absolute authoritarian nightmare, can enforce equality. Inequality is natural and expected. Capitalism is the natural order - it's an emergent phenomenon. People save money, invest it into other good ideas, they get more money, they reinvest it, and on and on. Eventually giant pools of money form to reduce risk, smooth returns, and enable professional investors to act on behalf of less-sophisticated ones. This results in pension funds, sovereign wealth, and a small number of individually rich people. The best you can do is forcibly take money from people and businesses and redistribute it. The best and fairest way to do this IMO is a straightforwards flat tax, but the tax code always and everywhere results in a Gordian Knot of favored industries, tax breaks, arbitrary taxes to attack some perceived enemy, and on and on. There will never be a permanent revolution against capitalism, just temporary fits like in Cuba and Russia that eventually die off. Capitalism is a reflection of human wants - the innate desire to own your own stuff. Everything else fans out from the fundamental desire for private property.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
The entirety of human history until the late medieval/early medieval period, all those hundreds of thousands of years existed without capitalism despite resource inequality. It can be hard to see beyond the dominant social structures we see around us every day, but don't confuse them for inevitabilities. Things will eventually change and whatever replaces the current structures will seem just as obviously inevitable to our descendents.

kellyharsh 4y ago

[dead]

camdenlock 4y ago

What a dreadful Marxist way of viewing something so dynamic and interesting, something that has and continues to delight many of us, not to mention provide us with the means of living incredibly lavish lives by the standards of our forebears. Software deserves much better than this myopic nonsense.

LesZedCB 4y ago
care to be more specific? for example, imagine how much MORE comfortable and wealthy we would be if all productive activity was channeled straight back into public projects, instead of through the business owners and then ostensibly downward?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- samarthr1 4y ago
  Well, what will end up happening is, instead of the money going to business owners, and then ostensibly downwards, it will go to the government officials and then ostensibly downward. Either way, there will be corruption and losses. The question then arises, which is better off on average for society, and which is better on average for _me_. If the two align, I vote for what is better for society.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - eat_veggies 4y ago
    it's ok we don't need government officials, or even money for them to take, for that matter. we can self organize and associate freely. check this out https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-ana...
    - dmitriid 4y ago

jongjong 4y ago

Our monetary system is designed to facilitate unlimited compounding interest and returns; this necessarily leads to centralization and monopolization which leads to a monoculture across all industries. I wouldn't be surprised if the same force which drives monoculture in agriculture is also responsible for monoculture in the software industry. The winners (first movers) tend to keep on winning - They just have to get it right the first time and after that they will keep winning most of the time regardless of what they do; whatever they push out into the markets. I think it's wrong to say that software is capital but software and the people who use it certainly follow capital very closely. Why do so many people use Uber? Because the investors are/were subsidizing the rides (making them cheaper). Why do people use Apple iPhones? Because it allows people to use money-saving apps like Uber. Why do people use Google search? Because its result pages are loaded with products which are subsidized by big investor funding like Uber. Why did Windows become so popular? Because all the big investor money was being spent on building games and programs for Windows (and also, big-money IBM gave them that huge contract). The infinitely compounding wealth of the richest investors decides everything. Most peoples' decisions regarding which software they use is determined by where the big money is being spent. Those who are getting all the big money can afford to lower their profit margins and the monetary surplus can facilitate an entire ecosystem to grow around them. These sometimes poorly designed but well-funded software systems and ecosystems starve funding from better alternative ecosystems and thus starves them of developers which starves them of users. On one side you have extremely wealthy companies which can sell or lease software solutions which are very cheap and low-margin (because these companies have so much surplus capital coming in from other channels) and on the other side, you have poor consumers who need to squeeze every penny to get by. This is the recipe for a winner-takes all economy. Just look at cryptocurrency; almost all the developers are working on Bitcoin or Ethereum. Not because they're the best (they're both horrible to develop for and integrate with) - They're simply able to attract developers because that's where the big investor money is and developers and their users are just constantly chasing the money with laser precision. Also, underlying all this, there is a constant force of peer-pressure which subtly nudges people towards solutions which are backed by big money. Big money can buy both respect and trust.

subradios 4y ago

maria2 4y ago

I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what software is, so it's a bit premature to say where it went wrong. The author says that "Software is not creative." This may be true, but software is a creation. And currently it is created in the most crude and rudimentary way possible. There are a lot of creative people out there. Writing software today is too hard. It takes too much knowledge and too much work. If writing a game was as easy as creating a TikTok video, imagine how much creativity would exist within the realm of software.

mattpallissard 4y ago
The two current approaches are no/low code which has been around in some aspect for a while now and ai/ML generated code which is young. I wonder if there will be another approach or if those approaches will get polished to a workable state.
- CRConrad 4y ago
  > The two current approaches are no/low code which has been around in some aspect for a while now That has been around for at least thirty-five years. If it were going to lead anywhere, it would have, by now. > and ai/ML generated code which is young. I'm expecting more of a repeat than a difference.
uejfiweun 4y ago
> I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what software is... Yes, agreed. Software is that magic dust that produces behavior. It's the technology that enables things to react to their environments. All life runs a form of software, you could say. Software will only increase in prevalence and importance as society continues to demand machines to behave in a certain way. It strikes me that articles like this are more gripes against the development process of software rather than the end product. The end product did not "go wrong" and is in fact at the peak of complexity and usefulness, and this peak will continue to get higher and higher until we reach the singularity.
LesZedCB 4y ago
i don't think the author is saying the process of software is not creative, but that software as software is not creative. software is not creative because it's static. any new data consumed by software isn't reincorporated into a new repetition of the software itself, but simply regurgitated slightly wrong. though, i actually disagree, it's just incorporated by the desiring-machines creating the software. :) pegging "software" to a static entity i think is flawed as it is in fact always changing, even in a simple machine-producing-machine system of a CD pipeline.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

I am writing a book that posits software is a form of literacy and I love the concept of commits as a "conversation" between authors. I think we probably will end up treating software as legal text (it will likely be as impactful) and the changes that will wrought are interesting ...

AlotOfReading 4y ago
I like to view software as pure thought that happens to be encoded in a weird, formal structure, very much analogous to writing and poetry. It's been a very useful perspective for me in a lot of ways and the parallels are substantial. It also implies a much vaster realm of "software thinking" filled with things like uxntal and colorforth than currently exists in the world. Instead, most people (myself included) spend the majority of our time writing corporate memos in passive voice.
RunSet 4y ago
> I am writing a book that posits software is a form of literacy The meaning of "computer literacy" is further diluted with each passing day. An equivalence: Imagine if the meaning of "literacy" was reduced to being able to use the Taco Bell menu to place an order, given the assistance of accompanying illustrations. I recommend reading this if you have not already: https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles/should-the-computer-teach-the-student-or-vice-versa/ https://citejournal.org/volume-2/issue-3-02/seminal-articles...

forthorbor 4y ago

This is a really good read, I only wish they covered more about open source as that is in conflict with their conclusion around software being capital.

hsn915 4y ago

I have no idea what this essay is tryig to say, but it seems to be sort based on leftist/marxist premises? I mean, look at this: - He thought the internet was going to get rid of "hateful" ideologies, to which I say, "lol what?" - He thought Trump tweeting things is proof that software is gone wrong - He complains about "Capital" at the end of the essay The whole essay seems to be a typical incomprehensible leftist terminology filled mumbo jumbo. I remember reading this kind of material when I took "Communications 101" in University, where nothing ever made sense. I guess I'm surprised this essay has so much engagement on HN. There are many things wrong with software and the startup culture; this essay doesn't even remotely touch any actually substantial point what those things are.

commandlinefan 4y ago
Yeah, this was really disappointing - things have gone very, very wrong with software, but this author is either unaware or uninterested in any of the actual reasons.

nathias 4y ago

Software didn't go 'wrong', people just decided monopolies are a good thing and stopped braking them up.

bombolo 4y ago
Gigachad 4y ago
Because we have better methods now. Rather than break up Apple, the EU knows they can just force Apple to do the right things when they don't naturally happen. We don't need the free market of 100 alternative products to have user respecting software. We can just legally mandate it. Right now the software and products we have are extremely good and keep getting better. Tech companies aren't just sitting on a legacy of old stuff collecting rent, they are actively investing and keeping their status by simply being the best.
- nathias 4y ago
  it's this kind of stupidity that the planet must now pay the price for
gorjusborg 4y ago
Yes, and in the U.S., corporations are legally people (with outsized influence due to their sums of money). So said another way, 'corporations decided monopolies are a good thing'.

yshklarov 4y ago

> We do not write code for our computers, but rather we write it for humans to read and use. Prime example of a "deepity".

_p4lt 4y ago

What is the point of this? To me this reads like contentless wordplay, some random software-insider negativity with a bit of anti-capitalism thrown in. I didn't really find any interesting points worth engaging with either positively or negatively. TBH I would have just downvoted this if I could. If you're scanning comments before reading, don't bother with it.

lucidguppy 4y ago
When I start to see walls of text I power scroll through the article to see headings and conclusions. I can quickly see if the article is written with me as the audience or if someone else is the intended reader. If you find the right technologies - starting up a company to do whatever "should" be done has never been easier. Software is capital? I don't even get this at all... why shouldn't startups be rewarded if they produce something people want? This article is written for people way smarter than me. I don't know who he's trying to convince.
- kbelder 4y ago
  >This article is written for people way smarter than me It's really, really not.
tezza 4y ago
+1. The article is disappointing throughout because its purpose seems to be posturing and name checking trendy learned stuff. Circular logic abounds. Is it angry with code or capitalism or the human condition? You get the impression all three. Solutions? never looked at It also ends with the ultimate cop out: Q: What is the solution? (paraphrased) A: I don’t know
commandlinefan 4y ago
> I would have just downvoted this I don't flag much on here, but I flagged this one.

onion-soup 4y ago

Micro Services

amelius 4y ago
A modern Linux system works as a bunch of microservices (systemd). Which is quite successful, so this can't be it.

strken 4y ago

Software in its natural state is not scarce, is freely copyable instead of transferable, and is not capital; just like the ability to start a fire or shear a sheep are not capital. Ownership over software is scarce and transferable. The thing that lets you use software as productive capital is the exclusive right to it. That right is entirely manmade.

argentier 4y ago
That's code rather than software. Just because you copied the cookbook doesn't mean you now own a restaurant. Especially in compute-intensive activities such as neural nets/ML, capital is very much a factor.

martincmartin 4y ago

(2020)

friend_and_foe 4y ago

I think all these types of questions and statements do a good job assuming a disconnect between software and the real world, between humans and the systems we build. If I build a bridge and it collapses, nobody asks "where did bridge building go wrong?" If I cut corners on a bridge and it doesnt collapse, and create a culture of doing this such that other builders also do it, if I normalize misaligned incentives to those that pay me rather than those that drive on my bridge, and then they all start to collapse, we don't talk about bridge building failing us all. We talk about what we did, our behavior and what it caused. The state of software, computing, social media, information availability, human rights on the internet, these are all because we, as in you and me, built something we knew was wrong for a paycheck, or at the very least overrepresented our skillset for a paycheck and delivered crap and swindled our employers and their customers. And questions like "where did software go wrong" are our way of passing the buck to a non entity, it's cowardly, it's pathetic, and every one of us, you and me, should take responsibility for what we have done, I mean literally, specifically, not some general collective truism, if not publicly at least when we look in the mirror by ourselves, and understand our role in the current state of the world, and either decide not to do it anymore or accept what we are.

heresie-dabord 4y ago

The OP's complaint: > The magic disappeared and our optimism has since faded. > Our websites are slow and insecure; > our startups are creepy and unprofitable; > our president Tweets hate speech; > we don’t trust our social media apps, webcams, or voting machines. > And in the era of coronavirus quarantining, we’re realizing just how inadequate the Internet turned out to be as a home of Mind. That's a mixed bag of laments about products and sociological phenomena. People using computers and software were supposed to solve all these problems? > this mess, this tool-assisted speedrun of accumulation and exploitation This is all of human history. It's a hard course in the frequent application of inhumane principles and failure to understand scale and sustainability. "Software" was never going to change human nature. > Where did it all go wrong? So, the OP's question itself is, at best, not an unworthy question but an incomplete question. The software industry was never going to "go right". You may as well ask "where human society went wrong". Or whether human society has ever gone right, at scale.

throwaway9870 4y ago
The glass is half-full or half-empty. We have websites and can do things I never dreamed of as a child. When I had to do product research when I was younger it meant going to a book store and pursuing a rack of magazines. Google was a startup, Amazon was a startup. I would not call them unprofitable. Back when I was young you had companies like SUN, SGI, MIPS as startups, where are they now? Our president tweets? Direct communication to people without it being filtered by N layers? I bet every president has said hate speech behinds the scene at some point. Now the curtain is being lifted. I consider that good, actually, incredible. If you think sitting in your house alone during COVID would have been better without having the internet, then just turn it off. But I don't know anybody who came to that conclusion. In the modern world people seem to criticize things that are not perfect. That is fine to notice those things, but to let them sway your entire outlook is unhealthy and, in many cases, wrong. Can we do better? Yes, I think so. But I don't think we are doing nearly as bad as the picture you paint. I think the biggest problem is that the Internet accelerated change to a speed that people are not accustomed to. It might take a couple generations to adapt.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> Software is for people It is also by people. History proves we are pretty flawed bunch. We bat around .500. Software is also a means. It is not an ends. It's misguided to expect a means to miraculously accomplish some ends. The ends is a function of the people utilizing the means. Did I mean we are a known to be flawed bunch?

borbulon 4y ago

> Software is at once a field of study, an industry, a career, a process of production, and a process of consumption—and only then a body of computer code. This is so, so, so, so true. It's rarely how software is implemented, though.

jrochkind1 4y ago

There's a paragraph in the middle that is hard to read because it keeps changing and overwriting itself in an animated fashion. Is that intentional, or is something going wrong with my browser? Directly above the video preceding the "Who does software benefit" heading.

jrochkind1 4y ago

> But we can break this pattern; we can find our own answers to those questions, and if it’s up to us, the answer does not need to be that answer we’ve been taught, capital. Can we, without changing the environment we are embedded in, without changing capitalism? Under capitalism, all economic activity is increasingly subsumed by quest for increasing capital -- and under neo-liberal capitalism, all activity is increasingly economic activity, to better serve the quest for increasing capital (to open up more places for investing capital). I think we can and should resist it, that's fine. I think it's good to recognize and point out what we're losing, and to urge resistance, as OP does, I'm not critisizing OP at all. It's just to have any chance of success, we probably have to talk about the system we are embedded within and how to change that too, not just limit ourselves to software production as an imaginary closed system. A different tack: I suppose for software production to escape becoming nothing more than capital intended to benefit people who own capital while reproducing capital -- software production would have to try not to be an economic activity, since all economic activity in our system ends up the former. Software production that was not economic activity was the original fantasy of many involved in original open source software production, I think literally exactly that. That... is now how it's gone. Why not? Would be a starting point for extending the locus of focus from software production on it's own to the social-political-cultural system of capitalism it is embedded in.

wellanyway 4y ago

Quoting Soviet philosophers, Marx... Making no actual claims or actually proposing to do anything except "capitalism bad". Typical left "wisdom".