8 ms·

"Old man yells at cloud", but in so-so-so many words

worldsayshi 1y ago
> we’ve traded reliability and understanding for the illusion of progress. I wish there was a somewhat rigorous way to quantify reliability of tech products so that we could conclude if tech on average was about as buggy in the past. I mean I also feel that things are more buggy and unreliable, but I don't know if there's any good way to measure it.
- troupo 1y ago
  I mean. I takes over a second with a blocking loading indicator to change car temperature by one degree: https://grumpy.website/1665 https://grumpy.website/1665 This... This is quite quantifiable
  - worldsayshi 1y ago
    I'm sure specific issues are quantifiable. But trying to quantify the overall trend seems like a challenge.
- ipcress_file 1y ago
  I'm conflicted. I remember when I bought my first vehicle with electronic ignition. It wasn't as good as the electronic ignition today and I had to replace a few black box components that I didn't understand (what is a "thick film module" anyways???). So I was irritated and wished that my truck still had points and a regular distributor. Flash forward to today. I can't remember the last time I replaced an ignition system component. I still don't know how they work. I can guarantee that the techs who do occasionally replace them at the dealer don't know how they work. But the whole system is so much more reliable. That said, I do wonder how young people are supposed to learn and gain understanding in a world where they cannot possibly understand the components in complex systems. Back in the day (I know, yelling at a cloud), I could actually understand how a set of points and a distributor -- or a even a three-transistor radio -- worked.
- palata 1y ago
  If you look e.g. at websites, I think we can measure that the average website today is slower to load than 15 years ago, even though hardware is orders of magnitude faster. Another thing is that today, you receive updates. So bugs get fixed, new bugs get introduced, it makes it harder to track other than "well, there are always bugs". Back then, a bug was there for life, burnt on your CD-ROM. I'm pretty sure software shipped on CD-ROM was a lot more tested than what we deploy now. You probably wouldn't burn thousands of CD-ROM with a "beta" version. Now the norm is to ship beta stuff and use 0-based versioning [1] because we can't make anything stable. Lastly, hardware today is a lot cheaper than 25 years ago. So now you buy a smartphone, it breaks after a year, you complain for 5min and you buy a new one. Those devices are almost disposable. 25 years ago you had to spend a lot of money on a PC, so it had to last for a while and be repairable. [1]: https://0ver.org/ https://0ver.org/
- scott_w 1y ago
  From playing video games, I'm going to say that generally games are more reliable today than they were in 2005, and I recall a few absolute fucking howlers from the 90s and 2000s (looking at you, Digimon World!) My comparison points: Fallout 3 being a shitshow of bugs on release vs Final Fantasy 7 Remake & Rebirth feeling practically bug-free on release. In fact, I don't think I hit any bugs in Final Fantasy 16 either.
  - zargon 1y ago
    Rest assured, Bethesda’s next release will be another bugfest. Not exactly a useful comparison.
    - scott_w 1y ago
      They probably will but they’re the comparisons I have to hand and, let’s be honest, this entire discussion is based on anecdotes.
  - troupo 1y ago
    On the other hand you didn't have "download this multigigabyte patch on day 1" because once burned to a CD it was there forever. Same for "you haven't touched your game console? here's 200 gigabytes of updates at 200kb/s"
    - scott_w 1y ago
      Having had a PS4 and a PS5, I’d say even this has improved.
torlok 1y ago
It's always old people complaining that 20-year-olds didn't learn programming 40 years ago like they did when computers had 5 assembly instructions, and a beeper for peripherals.
- palata 1y ago
  I understand how it may sound like this, given that older people will talk about assembly and electronics which most young developers have absolutely no clue about today and are still considered "software developers". But it's not specifically about assembly, it's about software design. You can take a modern programming language (say Swift or Rust) and look at how software written with those languages is architected, and the points still stand: abstractions above abstractions above abstractions because people don't understand the lower levels. People routinely write completely wrong CMakeLists and then complain about CMake being "sooo bad". But give them Meson and they will make a mess as well. People have no clue about packaging and distribution, so they will say "it sucks sooo badly" and will distribute their code as a docker container, embedded in a 6GB Ubuntu image. Most emails you receive just contain a couple lines of useful information, yet they are generated by higher-level systems, full of HTML and bullshit and it's impossible to read in a simple client. Etc. Software quality is going down year after year, it is a fact. Probably because it is becoming more and more accessible, but the fact remains.
  - scott_w 1y ago
    > I understand how it may sound like this, given that older people will talk about assembly and electronics which most young developers have absolutely no clue about today and are still considered "software developers". As a software engineer in his mid-30s now, I can assure you many "older people" will have little-to-no memory of messing around with assembly and electronics. When I was getting started, my boss told me about an engineer who had a deep knowledge of how to lay out data to efficiently read and process it. My response? "I just stick it in Postgres and it does it all for me!" No shade to that engineer but I do believe he was in his 50s/60s at the time, so it's quite likely he's retired on a decent pension by now!
palata 1y ago
I would be curious to know if: - You have enough experience to agree with the post but feel like writing such a post won't change anything, or - You are more of a junior and don't understand what the author means because you've grown up with the engineering quality we have today. Given that you consider this to be "so-so-so many words", I would bet it is the second option. Older people wouldn't consider that this is a huge text. Am I right? :-)
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]

> we’ve traded reliability and understanding for the illusion of progress. I wish there was a somewhat rigorous way to quantify reliability of tech products so that we could conclude if tech on average was about as buggy in the past. I mean I also feel that things are more buggy and unreliable, but I don't know if there's any good way to measure it.

troupo 1y ago
I mean. I takes over a second with a blocking loading indicator to change car temperature by one degree: https://grumpy.website/1665 https://grumpy.website/1665 This... This is quite quantifiable
- worldsayshi 1y ago
  I'm sure specific issues are quantifiable. But trying to quantify the overall trend seems like a challenge.
ipcress_file 1y ago
I'm conflicted. I remember when I bought my first vehicle with electronic ignition. It wasn't as good as the electronic ignition today and I had to replace a few black box components that I didn't understand (what is a "thick film module" anyways???). So I was irritated and wished that my truck still had points and a regular distributor. Flash forward to today. I can't remember the last time I replaced an ignition system component. I still don't know how they work. I can guarantee that the techs who do occasionally replace them at the dealer don't know how they work. But the whole system is so much more reliable. That said, I do wonder how young people are supposed to learn and gain understanding in a world where they cannot possibly understand the components in complex systems. Back in the day (I know, yelling at a cloud), I could actually understand how a set of points and a distributor -- or a even a three-transistor radio -- worked.
palata 1y ago
If you look e.g. at websites, I think we can measure that the average website today is slower to load than 15 years ago, even though hardware is orders of magnitude faster. Another thing is that today, you receive updates. So bugs get fixed, new bugs get introduced, it makes it harder to track other than "well, there are always bugs". Back then, a bug was there for life, burnt on your CD-ROM. I'm pretty sure software shipped on CD-ROM was a lot more tested than what we deploy now. You probably wouldn't burn thousands of CD-ROM with a "beta" version. Now the norm is to ship beta stuff and use 0-based versioning [1] because we can't make anything stable. Lastly, hardware today is a lot cheaper than 25 years ago. So now you buy a smartphone, it breaks after a year, you complain for 5min and you buy a new one. Those devices are almost disposable. 25 years ago you had to spend a lot of money on a PC, so it had to last for a while and be repairable. [1]: https://0ver.org/ https://0ver.org/
scott_w 1y ago
From playing video games, I'm going to say that generally games are more reliable today than they were in 2005, and I recall a few absolute fucking howlers from the 90s and 2000s (looking at you, Digimon World!) My comparison points: Fallout 3 being a shitshow of bugs on release vs Final Fantasy 7 Remake & Rebirth feeling practically bug-free on release. In fact, I don't think I hit any bugs in Final Fantasy 16 either.
- zargon 1y ago
  Rest assured, Bethesda’s next release will be another bugfest. Not exactly a useful comparison.
  - scott_w 1y ago
    They probably will but they’re the comparisons I have to hand and, let’s be honest, this entire discussion is based on anecdotes.
- troupo 1y ago
  On the other hand you didn't have "download this multigigabyte patch on day 1" because once burned to a CD it was there forever. Same for "you haven't touched your game console? here's 200 gigabytes of updates at 200kb/s"
  - scott_w 1y ago
    Having had a PS4 and a PS5, I’d say even this has improved.

torlok 1y ago

It's always old people complaining that 20-year-olds didn't learn programming 40 years ago like they did when computers had 5 assembly instructions, and a beeper for peripherals.

palata 1y ago
I understand how it may sound like this, given that older people will talk about assembly and electronics which most young developers have absolutely no clue about today and are still considered "software developers". But it's not specifically about assembly, it's about software design. You can take a modern programming language (say Swift or Rust) and look at how software written with those languages is architected, and the points still stand: abstractions above abstractions above abstractions because people don't understand the lower levels. People routinely write completely wrong CMakeLists and then complain about CMake being "sooo bad". But give them Meson and they will make a mess as well. People have no clue about packaging and distribution, so they will say "it sucks sooo badly" and will distribute their code as a docker container, embedded in a 6GB Ubuntu image. Most emails you receive just contain a couple lines of useful information, yet they are generated by higher-level systems, full of HTML and bullshit and it's impossible to read in a simple client. Etc. Software quality is going down year after year, it is a fact. Probably because it is becoming more and more accessible, but the fact remains.
- scott_w 1y ago
  > I understand how it may sound like this, given that older people will talk about assembly and electronics which most young developers have absolutely no clue about today and are still considered "software developers". As a software engineer in his mid-30s now, I can assure you many "older people" will have little-to-no memory of messing around with assembly and electronics. When I was getting started, my boss told me about an engineer who had a deep knowledge of how to lay out data to efficiently read and process it. My response? "I just stick it in Postgres and it does it all for me!" No shade to that engineer but I do believe he was in his 50s/60s at the time, so it's quite likely he's retired on a decent pension by now!

palata 1y ago

I would be curious to know if: - You have enough experience to agree with the post but feel like writing such a post won't change anything, or - You are more of a junior and don't understand what the author means because you've grown up with the engineering quality we have today. Given that you consider this to be "so-so-so many words", I would bet it is the second option. Older people wouldn't consider that this is a huge text. Am I right? :-)

aaron695 1y ago
[dead]