4 ms·

I wish Google would be biased a little more towards quality and performance. Their user-facing products tend to be full of jank, although Gmail is quite good to

I wish Google would be biased a little more towards quality and performance. Their user-facing products tend to be full of jank, although Gmail is quite good to be fair. In general I think the "ship fast and break things" mentality assumes a false dilemma, as if the alternative to shipping broken software is to not ship at all. If thats the mentality no wonder software sucks today. I'd rather teams shipped working, correct, and performant software even if it meant delaying additional features or shipping a constrained version of their vision. The minimalism of the software would probably end up being a net benefit instead of stuffing it full of half baked features anyways.

samiv 9mo ago
I wish people who ship crappy software didn't ship it and would let someone else ship something better instead. It really sucks when the first mover / incumbent is some crappy half assed solution. But unfortunately we live in a world where quality is largely irrelevant and other USPs are more important. For example these little weekend projects that become successful despite their distinct lack of quality Linux kernel - free Unix. JavaScript - scripting in browser Python - sane "perl" Today on GitHub alone you can probably find 100 more featured and higher quality projects than any of these were when they launched but nobody cares.
- ryandrake 9mo ago
  While we're wishing for things that are never going to happen, I wish users would stop adopting crappy half-assed first-mover software, causing them to gain momentum and become the defacto/dominant solution.
  - samiv 9mo ago
    That's the other side of the value added coin. Users sometimes find value even in the half assed software. Someone was once talking about the "solving the right problem wrong" vs "solving the wrong problem right".
    - disqard 9mo ago
      > "solving the right problem wrong" vs "solving the wrong problem right". That's a really useful framing!
- willi59549879 9mo ago
  how does the Linux kernel lack quality?
  - ghaff 9mo ago
    It did in the early days, especially up until 2.4 which was generally considered the first enterprise-ready kernel version. (You can argue about whether the old "enterprise-capable" definitions still applied but they were a benchmark for a lot of people.) Of course, lots of ancillary stuff too in userspace and outside the kernel related to filesystems and the like.
    - throwaway2037 9mo ago
      Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history#O...) tells me that version 2.4 was released in early 2001. That is a long time ago. Most of the commercial world was running SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, or AIX. So is it fair to say that the Linux kernel has been "quality" for 25 years now?
      - rswail 9mo ago
        2001 was immediately post dotcom crash and so all the people that had bought into the Sun "the network is the computer" were tossing out expensive E4Ks, and getting cheap intel servers to survive. HP-UX and AIX were already legacy. Linux 2.4 was when it hit critical mass because of the publicity of the dotcom boom and it was like what was left after the "tide went out and the market found out who was swimming naked".
        ghaff 9mo ago
        Certainly. The 2.4 kernel and IBM embracing Linux at around that time pretty much made all proprietary Unix legacy. The desktop took longer with less well-defined transition points and, arguably, MacOS with its BSD foundations (and command line option) ended up being a good alternative for a lot of the non-Windows crowd--though Windows is still dominant as a desktop/laptop OS. (Windows/Azure are, of course, still major in backend corporate environments as well.)
- websiteapi 9mo ago
  existing is better than not existing and those who move fast and ship crappy software first will win. learn the lesson :)
- ghaff 9mo ago
  WRT Linux. Sure, 1991 or really even mid-90s Linux was clearly immature. But Wall Street was adopting it instead of Solaris by the turn of the century. Plus "open source" so it wasn't the case of a new proprietary Unix just emerging from the sea foam which no one wanted anyway but Linux becoming the good enough Unix standard which is what people did want.
sdenton4 9mo ago
When you're not shipping, you're not learning from users. As a result, it's easy to build working, correct, performant code which doesn't fit what anyone actually needs.
- anonymars 9mo ago
  I think you can also learn from users when they complain en masse about the current atrocious state of software quality. But I guess that doesn't show up in telemetry. Until it does. Looking at you, Microsoft!
  - otterley 9mo ago
    I believe one of the main reasons why Windows 11 is getting so much vitriol is that Microsoft is focusing on customers, which aren't always identical to users. Most of the time, when you buy a Windows-based device, you're not their customer: you're the OEM's customer, and for the OEM, every nickel of expenses counts. On the other hand, direct Microsoft licensees, such as corporate ("enterprise") customers, get much more attention from the company and a significantly better experience.
  - astrange 9mo ago
    You can't learn from this because users always complain no matter what. The trick is they just complain about the last thing they remember being bad, so it's a good sign when that doesn't change, and it's bad if they start complaining about a new thing.
- llmslave2 9mo ago
  Figuring out what is useful for people is not some difficult problem that requires shipping half baked slop. That's just an excuse.
  - websiteapi 9mo ago
    ridiculous. > Figuring out what is useful for people is not some difficult problem that requires shipping half baked slop what have you shipped? paying sees literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to ship out fledged out software that no one wants is exactly why Stadia lasted both way too long and got cancelled anyway. figuring out what is useful is the hardest problem. if anything that's Google's biggest problem, not shipping fast enough, not iterating fast enough.

samiv 9mo ago

I wish people who ship crappy software didn't ship it and would let someone else ship something better instead. It really sucks when the first mover / incumbent is some crappy half assed solution. But unfortunately we live in a world where quality is largely irrelevant and other USPs are more important. For example these little weekend projects that become successful despite their distinct lack of quality Linux kernel - free Unix. JavaScript - scripting in browser Python - sane "perl" Today on GitHub alone you can probably find 100 more featured and higher quality projects than any of these were when they launched but nobody cares.

ryandrake 9mo ago
While we're wishing for things that are never going to happen, I wish users would stop adopting crappy half-assed first-mover software, causing them to gain momentum and become the defacto/dominant solution.
- samiv 9mo ago
  That's the other side of the value added coin. Users sometimes find value even in the half assed software. Someone was once talking about the "solving the right problem wrong" vs "solving the wrong problem right".
  - disqard 9mo ago
    > "solving the right problem wrong" vs "solving the wrong problem right". That's a really useful framing!
willi59549879 9mo ago
how does the Linux kernel lack quality?
- ghaff 9mo ago
  It did in the early days, especially up until 2.4 which was generally considered the first enterprise-ready kernel version. (You can argue about whether the old "enterprise-capable" definitions still applied but they were a benchmark for a lot of people.) Of course, lots of ancillary stuff too in userspace and outside the kernel related to filesystems and the like.
  - throwaway2037 9mo ago
    Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history#O...) tells me that version 2.4 was released in early 2001. That is a long time ago. Most of the commercial world was running SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, or AIX. So is it fair to say that the Linux kernel has been "quality" for 25 years now?
    - rswail 9mo ago
      2001 was immediately post dotcom crash and so all the people that had bought into the Sun "the network is the computer" were tossing out expensive E4Ks, and getting cheap intel servers to survive. HP-UX and AIX were already legacy. Linux 2.4 was when it hit critical mass because of the publicity of the dotcom boom and it was like what was left after the "tide went out and the market found out who was swimming naked".
      - ghaff 9mo ago
        Certainly. The 2.4 kernel and IBM embracing Linux at around that time pretty much made all proprietary Unix legacy. The desktop took longer with less well-defined transition points and, arguably, MacOS with its BSD foundations (and command line option) ended up being a good alternative for a lot of the non-Windows crowd--though Windows is still dominant as a desktop/laptop OS. (Windows/Azure are, of course, still major in backend corporate environments as well.)
websiteapi 9mo ago
existing is better than not existing and those who move fast and ship crappy software first will win. learn the lesson :)
ghaff 9mo ago
WRT Linux. Sure, 1991 or really even mid-90s Linux was clearly immature. But Wall Street was adopting it instead of Solaris by the turn of the century. Plus "open source" so it wasn't the case of a new proprietary Unix just emerging from the sea foam which no one wanted anyway but Linux becoming the good enough Unix standard which is what people did want.

sdenton4 9mo ago

When you're not shipping, you're not learning from users. As a result, it's easy to build working, correct, performant code which doesn't fit what anyone actually needs.

anonymars 9mo ago
I think you can also learn from users when they complain en masse about the current atrocious state of software quality. But I guess that doesn't show up in telemetry. Until it does. Looking at you, Microsoft!
- otterley 9mo ago
  I believe one of the main reasons why Windows 11 is getting so much vitriol is that Microsoft is focusing on customers, which aren't always identical to users. Most of the time, when you buy a Windows-based device, you're not their customer: you're the OEM's customer, and for the OEM, every nickel of expenses counts. On the other hand, direct Microsoft licensees, such as corporate ("enterprise") customers, get much more attention from the company and a significantly better experience.
- astrange 9mo ago
  You can't learn from this because users always complain no matter what. The trick is they just complain about the last thing they remember being bad, so it's a good sign when that doesn't change, and it's bad if they start complaining about a new thing.
llmslave2 9mo ago
Figuring out what is useful for people is not some difficult problem that requires shipping half baked slop. That's just an excuse.
- websiteapi 9mo ago
  ridiculous. > Figuring out what is useful for people is not some difficult problem that requires shipping half baked slop what have you shipped? paying sees literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to ship out fledged out software that no one wants is exactly why Stadia lasted both way too long and got cancelled anyway. figuring out what is useful is the hardest problem. if anything that's Google's biggest problem, not shipping fast enough, not iterating fast enough.