3 ms·

And yet, extraordinarily complex systems seem to work somehow, which means each of the zillions of pieces is pretty much doing the right thing.

gnulinux 4y ago
That's your opinion, and it seems to be the opinion of some people, I respect that. However, I strongly disagree. I use software all day every day (like most of us here, if not all) and I can confidently say none of the complex systems I use work at all. All software is buggy, most software is frustratingly buggy, and surprising amount of professional software is imho unusuably buggy. When I interact with a new software, my assumption is that it will not work. Unless proven otherwise, software of no complexity works in practice.
- chmod600 4y ago
  Unless you are an exceptional person, software has permeated your life. Most of the ways in which it affects you are invisible because it works so well.
  - gnulinux 4y ago
    My claim is not that "no software has any part that works", my claim is that "all software has some part that is buggy" which seems trivially demonstrably true in my life. I have unfortunately nothing to offer but anecdotes, but I go by my day and almost every moment something fails. I open jira tons of errors. I open an Android app, tons of issues. I open LinkedIn in browser, sometimes text box doesn't work. I open facebook, it has gazillions of weird problem that pop up every moment. In fact, I'll go against the wind a little more. A sibling comment in this chain claimed when software has bugs, it's resolved quickly. Wow, I cannot disagree more. I know bugs in tons of software I use that's been there for years, since I started using it. In fact, my principle is the exact opposite, if a software has a bug, unless you yourself fix it [1] chances are that bug won't be fixed. [1] if open source
- lovich 4y ago
  >... software of no complexity works in practice. That's trivially disprovable by mere fact that you have used software to send your opinion to everyone this forum also using untold amount's of software, and that we have received it and are replying to it. Unless you are using some black and white definition of `works` where everything acts exactly as expected 100% of the time, in which case I would suggest not doing anything ever because there is no agreed upon definition of behavior on anything more complex than basic math. Once you start defining behaviors there are a million ways to interpret any sentence
- UberFly 4y ago
  "none of the complex systems I use work at all" None of them?
  - gnulinux 4y ago
    I think by far the best working software I use today is Emacs, and yes it's full of bugs that frustrate me every day.
chrsjxn 4y ago
That's the crazy thing, right? I'm a software engineer. I've seen how poorly software is written, how badly it's tested, and how many stupid mistakes developers make. I've been the one making staggeringly stupid mistakes! And yet... the vast majority of the software we use just kinda works. And if it's broken, it doesn't tend to stay that way for long. It's easy to see problems as a developer, but our software could be so much worse.
- resonious 4y ago
  I think I'd push back a little bit on this. Watching non-technical people try to use apps and websites makes me feel an immense amount of guilt. It's crazy the amount of problems that I ignore because I am so used to them or because I understand the inner workings of things. When a non-technical person sees one of those problems, it's sometimes a show stopper. It wastes a lot of brain cycles for them to figure out what error messages mean, why there's a pop-up explaining some new arcane feature unrelated to their goal, why their form submit didn't go through, etc. The fact that software is so pervasive definitely speaks for itself, but we still have a very long way to go.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    > why there's a pop-up explaining some new arcane feature unrelated to their goal This is one of the worst things apps and websites have started to do. I can hardly open an app without encountering this. Note to devs and PMs who think these are a good idea: I don’t read them, I dismiss them immediately, and every time you do this I like your app a little bit less. Stop it.
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      My favorite thing is gmail or chat telling me about some new feature using an overlay instead of, I dunno, emailing it to me or sending me a chat message.
    - MrMember 4y ago
      It's gotten ridiculous. I log into my bank and click on my checking account and instead of taking me to a page with all my recent transactions it instead takes me to some page to set up savings buckets or something that I'll never use. My internet was down the other day so for something to do (I didn't think it would actually work, and it didn't) I logged into Comcast's site on my phone to see if there was an outage or something I could troubleshoot from there. I had to click through maybe half a dozen notifications of things I don't care about in the slightest just to get to the "home" page of my account. And that's just the first two things I thought of. That sort of miserable design where they try to get me to look at things I don't care about and will never care about just because it might make them money is so pervasive, it's everywhere.
pdntspa 4y ago
Until the moment you do anything weird or unexpected, then it goes haywire As someone who hates "average" and "normal", this is a big problem, particularly when the goalposts on that have moved to pretty much anything that anyone wants to do beyond elementary-school education-level difficulty The ease-of-use assholes that have ruined software can kindly go eat a dick
jollofricepeas 4y ago
This is life. People fail to recognize so much of life is imperfect down to our own biology and the design of the systems that span our planet as well. At some point, there is no return on the investment of perfect design. It seems our entire world is underpinned by “perfect is the enemy of good.” - https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/human-egg-cells-are-imperfect-too-often/ https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/human-egg-cells-are-imper... - https://biology.mit.edu/revealing-an-imperfect-actor-in-plant-biotechnology/ https://biology.mit.edu/revealing-an-imperfect-actor-in-plan... - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/human-knee-evolved-in-lockstep-with-osteoarthritis-harvard-study-says/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/human-knee-ev...
onion2k 4y ago
Most complex systems don't work correctly. They just don't fail catastrophically very often. They fail in small ways instead. A lost user account, an incorrect payment, a missing parvel, a poorly routed call. These things happen regularly - millions of times a day in fact - but out of hundreds of billions of interactions its hard to notice them. We're so used to things failing we stop noticing and think slightly broken is the same as working properly. That's kind of OK until it's your payment, or your parcel, or your account.

gnulinux 4y ago

That's your opinion, and it seems to be the opinion of some people, I respect that. However, I strongly disagree. I use software all day every day (like most of us here, if not all) and I can confidently say none of the complex systems I use work at all. All software is buggy, most software is frustratingly buggy, and surprising amount of professional software is imho unusuably buggy. When I interact with a new software, my assumption is that it will not work. Unless proven otherwise, software of no complexity works in practice.

chmod600 4y ago
Unless you are an exceptional person, software has permeated your life. Most of the ways in which it affects you are invisible because it works so well.
- gnulinux 4y ago
  My claim is not that "no software has any part that works", my claim is that "all software has some part that is buggy" which seems trivially demonstrably true in my life. I have unfortunately nothing to offer but anecdotes, but I go by my day and almost every moment something fails. I open jira tons of errors. I open an Android app, tons of issues. I open LinkedIn in browser, sometimes text box doesn't work. I open facebook, it has gazillions of weird problem that pop up every moment. In fact, I'll go against the wind a little more. A sibling comment in this chain claimed when software has bugs, it's resolved quickly. Wow, I cannot disagree more. I know bugs in tons of software I use that's been there for years, since I started using it. In fact, my principle is the exact opposite, if a software has a bug, unless you yourself fix it [1] chances are that bug won't be fixed. [1] if open source
lovich 4y ago
>... software of no complexity works in practice. That's trivially disprovable by mere fact that you have used software to send your opinion to everyone this forum also using untold amount's of software, and that we have received it and are replying to it. Unless you are using some black and white definition of `works` where everything acts exactly as expected 100% of the time, in which case I would suggest not doing anything ever because there is no agreed upon definition of behavior on anything more complex than basic math. Once you start defining behaviors there are a million ways to interpret any sentence
UberFly 4y ago
"none of the complex systems I use work at all" None of them?
- gnulinux 4y ago
  I think by far the best working software I use today is Emacs, and yes it's full of bugs that frustrate me every day.

chrsjxn 4y ago

That's the crazy thing, right? I'm a software engineer. I've seen how poorly software is written, how badly it's tested, and how many stupid mistakes developers make. I've been the one making staggeringly stupid mistakes! And yet... the vast majority of the software we use just kinda works. And if it's broken, it doesn't tend to stay that way for long. It's easy to see problems as a developer, but our software could be so much worse.

resonious 4y ago
I think I'd push back a little bit on this. Watching non-technical people try to use apps and websites makes me feel an immense amount of guilt. It's crazy the amount of problems that I ignore because I am so used to them or because I understand the inner workings of things. When a non-technical person sees one of those problems, it's sometimes a show stopper. It wastes a lot of brain cycles for them to figure out what error messages mean, why there's a pop-up explaining some new arcane feature unrelated to their goal, why their form submit didn't go through, etc. The fact that software is so pervasive definitely speaks for itself, but we still have a very long way to go.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  > why there's a pop-up explaining some new arcane feature unrelated to their goal This is one of the worst things apps and websites have started to do. I can hardly open an app without encountering this. Note to devs and PMs who think these are a good idea: I don’t read them, I dismiss them immediately, and every time you do this I like your app a little bit less. Stop it.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    My favorite thing is gmail or chat telling me about some new feature using an overlay instead of, I dunno, emailing it to me or sending me a chat message.
  - MrMember 4y ago
    It's gotten ridiculous. I log into my bank and click on my checking account and instead of taking me to a page with all my recent transactions it instead takes me to some page to set up savings buckets or something that I'll never use. My internet was down the other day so for something to do (I didn't think it would actually work, and it didn't) I logged into Comcast's site on my phone to see if there was an outage or something I could troubleshoot from there. I had to click through maybe half a dozen notifications of things I don't care about in the slightest just to get to the "home" page of my account. And that's just the first two things I thought of. That sort of miserable design where they try to get me to look at things I don't care about and will never care about just because it might make them money is so pervasive, it's everywhere.

pdntspa 4y ago

Until the moment you do anything weird or unexpected, then it goes haywire As someone who hates "average" and "normal", this is a big problem, particularly when the goalposts on that have moved to pretty much anything that anyone wants to do beyond elementary-school education-level difficulty The ease-of-use assholes that have ruined software can kindly go eat a dick

jollofricepeas 4y ago

This is life. People fail to recognize so much of life is imperfect down to our own biology and the design of the systems that span our planet as well. At some point, there is no return on the investment of perfect design. It seems our entire world is underpinned by “perfect is the enemy of good.” - https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/human-egg-cells-are-imperfect-too-often/ https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/human-egg-cells-are-imper... - https://biology.mit.edu/revealing-an-imperfect-actor-in-plant-biotechnology/ https://biology.mit.edu/revealing-an-imperfect-actor-in-plan... - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/human-knee-evolved-in-lockstep-with-osteoarthritis-harvard-study-says/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/04/human-knee-ev...

onion2k 4y ago

Most complex systems don't work correctly. They just don't fail catastrophically very often. They fail in small ways instead. A lost user account, an incorrect payment, a missing parvel, a poorly routed call. These things happen regularly - millions of times a day in fact - but out of hundreds of billions of interactions its hard to notice them. We're so used to things failing we stop noticing and think slightly broken is the same as working properly. That's kind of OK until it's your payment, or your parcel, or your account.