My answer to whether "software is getting worse" is it depends on the age of the software. I can't think of a single body of software that's been under continu

My answer to whether "software is getting worse" is it depends on the age of the software. I can't think of a single body of software that's been under continuous development over the last few decades that hasn't got markedly more stable. The Windows kernel, the Linux kernel, Android, iPhone, gcc, web browsers, web servers, Office software, and even RAID off the top of my head are all vastly better than they were. (I've lost more data to early hardware RAID and IBM SAN's than to failing HDD's). But that old software is swamped by new software - web pages in particular, but also IoT, Tesla self driving, smart TV's, Max 737's, my robot vacuum and my step daughters desk (it refuses to go up unless you reset it). As predicted software is indeed eating the world, so new software is everywhere. A day doesn't go by without me having to work around the deficiencies of some piece of crap. So you could be forgiven for thinking that software is getting worse if all you are doing is comparing mature software to new stuff. But remember a long time ago (well not that long, as I was a programmer back then too), that mature software was just a new and unreliable as todays new software. With very rare exceptions like the space shuttle software (because it requires a metric f*k ton of money to get bugs per loc in new software down to 5 or 6 nines), all new software is shit.