5 ms·

To be fair, the quality of software has dramatically dropped, apps now take 10 seconds to load, memory usage is maxed, games crash and people needed to reinstal

To be fair, the quality of software has dramatically dropped, apps now take 10 seconds to load, memory usage is maxed, games crash and people needed to reinstall their OS so frequently that Microsoft literally added a "reset PC" option.. You can argue that software does much more than before, sure I agree but no one asked for so much bloat and features in every day apps. My note taking app doesn't need AI.

pcwalton 1y ago
Your note taking app doesn't need AI, but it also doesn't need OLE, which represented an equally hot buzzword ("software componentry") of the 90s that Microsoft was trying to shoehorn into everything. Every generation has its hype cycle; it's nothing new.
zzo38computer 1y ago
I had found often not only adding too much bloat and stuff but also often lacks stuff which is actually useful. (I wrote programs the way that I do, in order to try to avoid the problems; it is not perfect but in some ways it helps.)
aidenn0 1y ago
Software crashed all the time back then. Hitting control-S was one of those things you just did by habit so as to not lose too much work when it happened.
browningstreet 1y ago
Apps take 10 seconds to load? Which apps, on what system? My whole machine reboots in less than 10 seconds. I haven’t seen a blue screen of death in a decade. I haven’t had significant data loss from a failed drive or a corrupt machine in.. I can’t remember. Even DaVinci Resolve is ready to run in a few short seconds. This is all on a machine I bought 6-8 years ago. I reboot my phone and watch and laptop when I think to, not because I have to. I run half a dozen browsers and hundreds of tabs and play YouTube while waiting for a remote machine to deploy to an immutable temp instance that gets destroyed after every test cycle. I speak to my AIs and I can live and work anywhere on this planet that legally allows me. There are problems in our world and on our machines and in our governments but apps don’t take 10 seconds to load. Except ServiceNow. I’ll give you that one.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  Gimp. On any system.
  - seba_dos1 1y ago
    GIMP takes pretty long to launch indeed, but it's still under 5 seconds on my 6yo XPS 13. Even on my Cortex-A53 phone it doesn't reach 10 seconds.
  - deathanatos 1y ago
    GIMP takes ~2s to start on my 2016 Linux laptop. (Though I do think it takes significantly longer to start on my 2024 MBP…)
  - MalbertKerman 1y ago
    On my personal 2017-vintage i5-7200U, GIMP opens in under 5 seconds. On the computer I had for my last job, a 2023-ish i7, about 30 seconds. The problem was the shitheap of corporate security software that bogged down the zillion file access operations during application startup, not the app itself.
  - bombela 1y ago
    Notice how everybody replying says "less than 5s". As if anything done on a machine going through 10_000_000_000 (10 Giga) instructions per seconds should be anything but perceived instantaneous, for it's finite lifetime human user.
- ale42 1y ago
  Illustrator for example, on a very recent PC. I can't figure out why it takes so much time to load and it's so heavy. It's not even an Electron app...
- alnwlsn 1y ago
  Altium, Solidworks. Altium is "go and get coffee" slow! Kicad loads in 2 seconds, and FreeCAD in 7 seconds though.
spamizbad 1y ago
I don’t know what period your referencing but software quality wasn’t exactly amazing back in the day. It did mandate a higher degree of validation before release due to the distribution nature (physical media as opposed to a download) but even then some remarkably dumb bugs made it out the door
MalbertKerman 1y ago
> To be fair, the quality of software has dramatically dropped, apps now take 10 seconds to load, memory usage is maxed, games crash and people needed to reinstall their OS so frequently that Microsoft literally added a "reset PC" option.. Are you talking about the 90s or now? Because those were all at least as true then as now. Everything took forever. You needed more RAM every month. Everything crashed constantly. I had to reinstall Win98SE so many fucking times that I can still type F73WT-WHD3J-CD4VR-2GWKD-T38YD from memory. The amount of suck in commercial software is constant. Companies always prioritize adding the shiny-looking features that sell software to rubes over improving things like memory use, response time, and general quality of life until the quality of life is actually bad enough to drive customers to another vendor, so it's perpetually bad enough to keep the average customer right on the edge of "oh fuck this, I'm switching to something else."
protocolture 1y ago
>To be fair, the quality of software has dramatically dropped Part of my job when I was a youngn, was rebooting the Windows NT server running the software router because packets stopped forwarding for the entire net cafe.
root_axis 1y ago
Software quality has massively improved across every dimension. Memory constraints are basically non-existent for most people. Software is more reliable, discoverable and portable than at any time in history. The idea that reinstalling your OS is more common today than 30 years ago is just obviously not true. We are currently living through a golden age of software.

pcwalton 1y ago

Your note taking app doesn't need AI, but it also doesn't need OLE, which represented an equally hot buzzword ("software componentry") of the 90s that Microsoft was trying to shoehorn into everything. Every generation has its hype cycle; it's nothing new.

zzo38computer 1y ago

I had found often not only adding too much bloat and stuff but also often lacks stuff which is actually useful. (I wrote programs the way that I do, in order to try to avoid the problems; it is not perfect but in some ways it helps.)

aidenn0 1y ago

Software crashed all the time back then. Hitting control-S was one of those things you just did by habit so as to not lose too much work when it happened.

browningstreet 1y ago

Apps take 10 seconds to load? Which apps, on what system? My whole machine reboots in less than 10 seconds. I haven’t seen a blue screen of death in a decade. I haven’t had significant data loss from a failed drive or a corrupt machine in.. I can’t remember. Even DaVinci Resolve is ready to run in a few short seconds. This is all on a machine I bought 6-8 years ago. I reboot my phone and watch and laptop when I think to, not because I have to. I run half a dozen browsers and hundreds of tabs and play YouTube while waiting for a remote machine to deploy to an immutable temp instance that gets destroyed after every test cycle. I speak to my AIs and I can live and work anywhere on this planet that legally allows me. There are problems in our world and on our machines and in our governments but apps don’t take 10 seconds to load. Except ServiceNow. I’ll give you that one.

cluckindan 1y ago
Gimp. On any system.
- seba_dos1 1y ago
  GIMP takes pretty long to launch indeed, but it's still under 5 seconds on my 6yo XPS 13. Even on my Cortex-A53 phone it doesn't reach 10 seconds.
- deathanatos 1y ago
  GIMP takes ~2s to start on my 2016 Linux laptop. (Though I do think it takes significantly longer to start on my 2024 MBP…)
- MalbertKerman 1y ago
  On my personal 2017-vintage i5-7200U, GIMP opens in under 5 seconds. On the computer I had for my last job, a 2023-ish i7, about 30 seconds. The problem was the shitheap of corporate security software that bogged down the zillion file access operations during application startup, not the app itself.
- bombela 1y ago
  Notice how everybody replying says "less than 5s". As if anything done on a machine going through 10_000_000_000 (10 Giga) instructions per seconds should be anything but perceived instantaneous, for it's finite lifetime human user.
ale42 1y ago
Illustrator for example, on a very recent PC. I can't figure out why it takes so much time to load and it's so heavy. It's not even an Electron app...
alnwlsn 1y ago
Altium, Solidworks. Altium is "go and get coffee" slow! Kicad loads in 2 seconds, and FreeCAD in 7 seconds though.

spamizbad 1y ago

I don’t know what period your referencing but software quality wasn’t exactly amazing back in the day. It did mandate a higher degree of validation before release due to the distribution nature (physical media as opposed to a download) but even then some remarkably dumb bugs made it out the door

MalbertKerman 1y ago

> To be fair, the quality of software has dramatically dropped, apps now take 10 seconds to load, memory usage is maxed, games crash and people needed to reinstall their OS so frequently that Microsoft literally added a "reset PC" option.. Are you talking about the 90s or now? Because those were all at least as true then as now. Everything took forever. You needed more RAM every month. Everything crashed constantly. I had to reinstall Win98SE so many fucking times that I can still type F73WT-WHD3J-CD4VR-2GWKD-T38YD from memory. The amount of suck in commercial software is constant. Companies always prioritize adding the shiny-looking features that sell software to rubes over improving things like memory use, response time, and general quality of life until the quality of life is actually bad enough to drive customers to another vendor, so it's perpetually bad enough to keep the average customer right on the edge of "oh fuck this, I'm switching to something else."

protocolture 1y ago

>To be fair, the quality of software has dramatically dropped Part of my job when I was a youngn, was rebooting the Windows NT server running the software router because packets stopped forwarding for the entire net cafe.

root_axis 1y ago

Software quality has massively improved across every dimension. Memory constraints are basically non-existent for most people. Software is more reliable, discoverable and portable than at any time in history. The idea that reinstalling your OS is more common today than 30 years ago is just obviously not true. We are currently living through a golden age of software.