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>The brittleness is what gets me. In physical mechanical and even analog electrical systems there are tolerances. Things can almost-work and still work for vary

>The brittleness is what gets me. In physical mechanical and even analog electrical systems there are tolerances. Things can almost-work and still work for varying degrees of work. I think you are misrepresenting how flexible software is versus hardware. Mechanical and electrical systems have tolerances but if you go outside those tolerances, the whole system can be destroyed. Nothing like that is common in software. Worst-case outcomes might be like "the performance isn't as good as we want" or "this code is difficult to work with." Software components are very flexible compared to anything physical, even in the worst cases. >We are still stuck in "throw it away and do it over" and constantly reinventing wheels because there is no way to make wheels fit. The nature of digital means there are no tolerances. The concept isn't even valid. Things fit 100% or 0%. I don't know how one can look at the amazing array of libraries out there and conclude that we have no reuse. Sometimes people build their own solutions because they need something very simple and the libraries are too big to be worth importing and learning in those circumstances. That's not a flaw in the libraries. It's human nature. >We keep inventing languages. They don't help. We keep inventing frameworks. They don't help. We keep trying "design patterns" and "methodologies." They don't help. If anything all the stuff we invent makes the problem worse. Now we have an ecosystem with 20 different languages, 50 different runtimes, and 30 variants of 5 OSes. Complexity goes up, costs go up, reusability never happens, etc. All of this is too pessimistic. These tools do help. Exactly how many languages do you think we should have? Do you think exactly one group is going to develop for each use case and satisfy everyone? >WASM has its uses but I can't escape the idea that it's like "let's build a VM and carry all the shortcomings of C into it." I'm not a web guy but this sounds silly. It's not meant to be written directly. Complaining about shortcomings of WASM is literally like complaining about shortcomings of assembly language. It's not intended for human consumption, in modern times.

ghaff 2y ago
There's probably more tendency to be sloppy in software because "we can always fix it in post." But absolutely, with hardware, if you don't get it right--especially with heavy construction or modern electronics, you're going to have to rip a lot out and start over.
- vacuity 2y ago
  I've thought that we should be able to move so fast with software, and sometimes I see that successfully, but usually it seems like we leverage computers' superior performance poorly. To pick on frontend, it's trivial to create the next shiny Javascript framework, but what of it? Or, how come refactoring can be so painful, when the semantic change might be small? I think the flexibility and performance of computers is such that we programmers are usually incapable of effectively using them. It's like a 3D optimization problem visualization, looking for the highest peak around, except the cursor moves a lot faster than it can peruse the landscape. It zooms around aimlessly, easily getting to arbitrary places but without the capacity to make sense of them. When the train is in motion, switching tracks is hard, even if that would be the best move.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    It's easy to assume that you can always fix things after the fact. And I was only half joking with the fix it in post comment. Modern film suffers from some of the same problem. No need to get it right on the first pass. We can always apply corrections later.

ghaff 2y ago

There's probably more tendency to be sloppy in software because "we can always fix it in post." But absolutely, with hardware, if you don't get it right--especially with heavy construction or modern electronics, you're going to have to rip a lot out and start over.

vacuity 2y ago
I've thought that we should be able to move so fast with software, and sometimes I see that successfully, but usually it seems like we leverage computers' superior performance poorly. To pick on frontend, it's trivial to create the next shiny Javascript framework, but what of it? Or, how come refactoring can be so painful, when the semantic change might be small? I think the flexibility and performance of computers is such that we programmers are usually incapable of effectively using them. It's like a 3D optimization problem visualization, looking for the highest peak around, except the cursor moves a lot faster than it can peruse the landscape. It zooms around aimlessly, easily getting to arbitrary places but without the capacity to make sense of them. When the train is in motion, switching tracks is hard, even if that would be the best move.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It's easy to assume that you can always fix things after the fact. And I was only half joking with the fix it in post comment. Modern film suffers from some of the same problem. No need to get it right on the first pass. We can always apply corrections later.