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Unironically, I want finished software. I don't like it one bit how the vast majority of software products today are in an "eternal beta", so to speak. Android

Unironically, I want finished software. I don't like it one bit how the vast majority of software products today are in an "eternal beta", so to speak. Android, in particular, is a finished product. It doesn't need yearly updates. It may need an occasional update to patch a vulnerability, but this whole "we changed the notification shade UI for tenth time because we're so out of ideas" thing has to stop.

axus 1y ago
On Google Play, it's only finished for a few years at best. If it's not updated to the latest version, eventually it gets delisted.
- grishka 1y ago
  That's exactly my point — if Android itself doesn't have meaningless updates every year, then apps won't need them either.
godelski 1y ago
> Unironically, I want finished software. I don't think software is ever finished. But I'd definitely love to not be shipped alpha or beta software. MVPs are great when hacking, but why are we shipping hacked together stuff. "It works" doesn't mean it actually works...
- grishka 1y ago
  > I don't think software is ever finished. Back when it came on physical media, it was very much finished. Needing an update to fix a critical bug or a UX issue was a very costly problem to have, both in money and in reputation. Users had to be convinced to buy and install major updates, instead of being strong-armed into it. Staying on an older version was easier, and in case of operating systems, much more widely accepted. Many video games fall into that category even today. Sure, the "we can always release an update" mentality did infest game developers as well, but, unlike apps and OSes, most games do have a finite scope and stop being developed once that scope has been realized.
  - godelski 1y ago
    > Back when it came on physical media, it was very much finished. That's also not true and I think you're not reading my point fairly. Back when software came on physical media we still had patches. We had patches that came through the internet and we had patches that came through physical media. The latter making it harder to patch. It's a great situation when a bug is discovered and it is hard to patch. You're fantasizing about a time that never existed. Software isn't "ever finished" because we are not omniscient writers who can foresee all problems, fix all bugs, and write software that is unhackable. That's the mindset that "all tests pass" or "it works for me" means the software "works." We can't address the problems, as discussed in the article and that I mentioned in my comment, if we're going to retcon history and redirect ourselves to a worse environment. That doesn't fix anything. We'll never be omniscient, sorry. The world changes. Hardware changes. Software rots. Time marches on. These do not change and we have to operate in a world where we acknowledge these basic facts of reality. We'll never make decent software if we can't acknowledge reality first.
    - palata 1y ago
      > Back when software came on physical media we still had patches. We had patches that came through the internet and we had patches that came through physical media. Did you live at a time where Internet was not a thing? I remember very clearly buying software on physical media and never, ever "receiving" a single patch. I don't even know how that would have looked... "buy this floppy disk, it's a patch for a bug in the other floppy disk you bought recently"? I remember being able to buy "the next version", though. But the expectation was that I was buying a "finished" version, not something unfinished that required me to buy all the next versions.
      - mechanicalpulse 1y ago
        > Did you live at a time where Internet was not a thing? You must be relatively young. Software existed before the widespread adoption of the Internet. > I remember very clearly buying software on physical media and never, ever "receiving" a single patch. You had to take action to receive them. They weren’t automatic updates like they are today. > I don't even know how that would have looked... "buy this floppy disk, it's a patch for a bug in the other floppy disk you bought recently"? That’s exactly what it looked like. That’s still the process today for some systems —- avionics updates for Boeing 747s are provided on 3.5” floppies.
BrenBarn 1y ago
Yeah, that's the problem. As soon as it became feasible to push upgrades over the wire, software companies started relying on it. And unfortunately that mentality is viral, because as soon as one thing starts doing that, anything that else that interoperates with that other thing winds up having to do it to some extent. It's a tragedy of the commons.

axus 1y ago

On Google Play, it's only finished for a few years at best. If it's not updated to the latest version, eventually it gets delisted.

grishka 1y ago
That's exactly my point — if Android itself doesn't have meaningless updates every year, then apps won't need them either.

godelski 1y ago

> Unironically, I want finished software. I don't think software is ever finished. But I'd definitely love to not be shipped alpha or beta software. MVPs are great when hacking, but why are we shipping hacked together stuff. "It works" doesn't mean it actually works...

grishka 1y ago
> I don't think software is ever finished. Back when it came on physical media, it was very much finished. Needing an update to fix a critical bug or a UX issue was a very costly problem to have, both in money and in reputation. Users had to be convinced to buy and install major updates, instead of being strong-armed into it. Staying on an older version was easier, and in case of operating systems, much more widely accepted. Many video games fall into that category even today. Sure, the "we can always release an update" mentality did infest game developers as well, but, unlike apps and OSes, most games do have a finite scope and stop being developed once that scope has been realized.
- godelski 1y ago
  > Back when it came on physical media, it was very much finished. That's also not true and I think you're not reading my point fairly. Back when software came on physical media we still had patches. We had patches that came through the internet and we had patches that came through physical media. The latter making it harder to patch. It's a great situation when a bug is discovered and it is hard to patch. You're fantasizing about a time that never existed. Software isn't "ever finished" because we are not omniscient writers who can foresee all problems, fix all bugs, and write software that is unhackable. That's the mindset that "all tests pass" or "it works for me" means the software "works." We can't address the problems, as discussed in the article and that I mentioned in my comment, if we're going to retcon history and redirect ourselves to a worse environment. That doesn't fix anything. We'll never be omniscient, sorry. The world changes. Hardware changes. Software rots. Time marches on. These do not change and we have to operate in a world where we acknowledge these basic facts of reality. We'll never make decent software if we can't acknowledge reality first.
  - palata 1y ago
    > Back when software came on physical media we still had patches. We had patches that came through the internet and we had patches that came through physical media. Did you live at a time where Internet was not a thing? I remember very clearly buying software on physical media and never, ever "receiving" a single patch. I don't even know how that would have looked... "buy this floppy disk, it's a patch for a bug in the other floppy disk you bought recently"? I remember being able to buy "the next version", though. But the expectation was that I was buying a "finished" version, not something unfinished that required me to buy all the next versions.
    - mechanicalpulse 1y ago
      > Did you live at a time where Internet was not a thing? You must be relatively young. Software existed before the widespread adoption of the Internet. > I remember very clearly buying software on physical media and never, ever "receiving" a single patch. You had to take action to receive them. They weren’t automatic updates like they are today. > I don't even know how that would have looked... "buy this floppy disk, it's a patch for a bug in the other floppy disk you bought recently"? That’s exactly what it looked like. That’s still the process today for some systems —- avionics updates for Boeing 747s are provided on 3.5” floppies.

BrenBarn 1y ago

Yeah, that's the problem. As soon as it became feasible to push upgrades over the wire, software companies started relying on it. And unfortunately that mentality is viral, because as soon as one thing starts doing that, anything that else that interoperates with that other thing winds up having to do it to some extent. It's a tragedy of the commons.