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We should normalize "finished" software products that stop feature creep and focus strictly on bug fixes and security updates. It takes real courage for a buil

by wenbin 7mo ago

We should normalize "finished" software products that stop feature creep and focus strictly on bug fixes and security updates. It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand. Evernote and Dropbox were perfect in 2012. Adding more features just to chase new user growth often comes at the expense of confusing the existing user base. Not good

ryandrake 7mo ago
This is one of the biggest issues in software development: So few projects are willing to admit that they are finished. I can probably count on one hand how many software products I use every day that actually get better (or stay the same) on update. The vast majority of them peaked somewhere around v1.0, and are just getting worse every time the developer touches them.
- janalsncm 7mo ago
  I can understand the incentives for professional software. If you admit the software is done then management will question why they need you anymore. For OSS it’s more psychological: admitting you’re feature complete is cutting off the dopamine hit of building new things.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
paxys 7mo ago
You are basically describing all software ever shipped before webapps and online updates became a thing. Companies wrote software and sold them in boxes. You paid once and it was yours forever. You got exactly what was in the box, no more and no less. The company then shipped a new verson in a different box 1-3 years later. If you liked it enough, and wanted the new features, you bought the new box.
- wenbin 7mo ago
  Yea, good old days :) The catch was that old boxed software eventually breaks on new OS versions or devices. However, SaaS has the potential to "freeze" features while remaining functional 20+ years down the road. Behind the scenes, developers can update server dependencies and push minor fixes to ensure compatibility with new browsers and screen sizes. From the end-user's perspective, the product remains unchanged and reliable. To me, that’s very good!
  - paxys 7mo ago
    My experience is actually the opposite. In the old days there was no expection when and if users would upgrade anything, so vendors had to take extra care to ensure compatibility or they would lose business. People in a single office could be running 6 different versions of Microsoft Office, and the same file had to be viewable and editable on all of them. A company could decide to upgrade to Office 2010 but stay on Windows XP, so the Office division had the finanical incentive to ensure that newer versions would work on an older OS. Nowadays the standard is "you must be on the newest version of everything all the time, or the app won't work". Don't want to upgrade to Win 11? Want to use Firefox instead of Chrome? Don't want all the bells and whistles that come with the newest version of the software? Too bad.
    - guhidalg 7mo ago
      More like "you must be on the newest version of everything all the time, or you will get hacked".
      - thewebguyd 7mo ago
        Because security fixes don't get backported, when they could, and few are still doing separate security vs. feature updates. Even Windows is doing it now with CUs, bundling feature & vulnerability patches together, then deprecating the last version. You don't have a choice anymore, it's "accept the features or else"
    - Gigachad 7mo ago
wtallis 7mo ago
Dropbox is a great example. It's now a fundamentally different product than the original, and has re-created exactly the problem the original solved. There's no longer a good cloud-synced folder tool; everybody has gone back to implementing network filesystems that are much more complex and a badly leaky abstraction.
- masterlee_fn 7mo ago
  [dead]
erikpukinskis 7mo ago
It’s funny, Express.js tried this. 4.x was basically a complete piece of software. There weren’t any great reasons to change the API. But people hated that. They considered it “unmaintained”. They moved to Koa and Hono because they appeared to be more “actively maintained”.
- allreduce 7mo ago
  Well it works better if your users have some intelligence^H^H^H wisdom. :)
ivanjermakov 7mo ago
I think it's common in libraries of small to medium size. I often see Haskell and Rust packages that are not updated because full functionality achieved, no bugs and 100% test coverage. Absolutely not the case with enterprise software. Zawinski's law is truer than ever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20165602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20165602
al_borland 7mo ago
I think the hard part is understanding if “finished” software is still maintained. I’ll pick on AppZapper here. It doesn’t need to do much, it’s a Mac app that finds the files related to an application and deletes them, for a complete uninstall. It released in 2006, with v2 coming out in 2010. The website looks like it’s still from that era and the last update was in 2020, almost 6 years ago. To be fair, it’s a cool app, from the “delicious” design era. It makes a ray gun “zap” sound as it uninstalls an apps, for no reason other than to be fun. It’s great. Is it still in active maintenance with nothing to do, and there have been no meaningful changes in how apps are installed in the last 6 years, or has it been abandoned? I really don’t know. If I’m a new user trying to decide if I should pay $20 for this app, what do I do? I don’t want updates for updates sake, as that leads to enshitification, but there needs to be some sign that a user isn’t throwing money at a dead product. Or in the ls example, developing a workflow around a dead tool. A ran into a similar question with Yojimbo. It also launched in 2006. When v2 came out it was a paid upgrade and seemed fairly minor for how much was being charged (at least to a broke college student). It felt like they didn’t really care about it. But here we are 20 years later and it still seems to be going. But it was 14 years between v2 and v3, and the last release was in 2023. With 14 years of support, maybe that v2 would have been a worthwhile upgrade for me in hindsight, but when they go years without an update, I start to question if I should be looking to something with more support. Should a new user buy and invest time in putting their data into something that hasn’t been updated in 3 years, or is that a red flag? These are the things I struggle with.
- _qib3 7mo ago
  What exactly is wrong with installing an abandoned product? Just because it's abandoned doesn't mean you can't use it.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 7mo ago
    I think the reasonable fear is that the product no longer works. Maybe Apple changed a required API in 2021 and poster would be purchasing a lemon.
  - al_borland 7mo ago
pcchristie 7mo ago
I remember the first time I experienced this was an iOS app called Task Eater. It was simple To-dos. Attractive, snappy, everything you could need. The dev released a "final update" where he basically declared it was done. This was pretty early iOS (iPhone 4 era?). The only problem is he never updated it to roll forward to future iOS version/iPhone models and it hasn't been usable for years (and years). This made me search it up - the world moves so fast it's difficult to find any information on it whatsoever.
eviks 7mo ago
Excellent self-owning example: > Dropbox were perfect in 2012 You mean that dumb app that forced you to move files into a single folder instead of adapting to your workflow was prefect? Yeah, no, we shouldn't normalize that, we should push for improvements
- rablackburn 7mo ago
  Excellent self-owning example: > You mean that dumb app that forced you to move files into a single folder instead of adapting to your workflow was prefect? Users in 2012 were overwhelmingly of the cohort who's metaphor for doing work on a computer was the filesystem. You opened Files with Programs, worked on them, saved them. You wanted your latest Files on all your computers (1), and you wanted to Share them (2). Unless users were on a system managed by a sysadmin there were only really two solutions for problems (1)&(2): you would Email the File (A), or you would copy it to a Floppy/CD/USB (B) and physically move it. Note the caveat of "in absence of a sysadmin". So either on a school or corporate work environment, or if you happened to have a geek in your family/social group who did it as a passion project. Or y'know, if _you_ were the geek you could roll your own. So of course when Dropbox was first introduced to a technical audience they didn't get it. See the infamous thread ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 While you're there, note the tag line in the title of the post "Throw away your USB key" Now rereading your comment it is clearly an example of exactly what OP was referring to: > It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand. If Dropbox did not "adapt to your workflow", then just _don't use Dropbox_. Instead you attack it as "dumb" and demand it change...and those users for whom Dropbox _was_ perfectly adapted don't have their solution anymore. Software doesn't have to be forever changing and chasing user growth; it's not a zero-sum game. The bits don't care if no one uses them. But _people_ care if you take away their bits. > ...we shouldn't normalize that, we should push for improvements Agreed, you should create a new solution and put it out there! Just as suggested by the post you've replied to :)
unselect5917 7mo ago
I wrote my comment before I read yours, but it perfectly explains why software doesn't do that. Sadly I can't take credit for the core idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272024

by wenbin 7mo ago

ryandrake 7mo ago

This is one of the biggest issues in software development: So few projects are willing to admit that they are finished. I can probably count on one hand how many software products I use every day that actually get better (or stay the same) on update. The vast majority of them peaked somewhere around v1.0, and are just getting worse every time the developer touches them.

janalsncm 7mo ago
I can understand the incentives for professional software. If you admit the software is done then management will question why they need you anymore. For OSS it’s more psychological: admitting you’re feature complete is cutting off the dopamine hit of building new things.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

paxys 7mo ago

You are basically describing all software ever shipped before webapps and online updates became a thing. Companies wrote software and sold them in boxes. You paid once and it was yours forever. You got exactly what was in the box, no more and no less. The company then shipped a new verson in a different box 1-3 years later. If you liked it enough, and wanted the new features, you bought the new box.

wenbin 7mo ago
Yea, good old days :) The catch was that old boxed software eventually breaks on new OS versions or devices. However, SaaS has the potential to "freeze" features while remaining functional 20+ years down the road. Behind the scenes, developers can update server dependencies and push minor fixes to ensure compatibility with new browsers and screen sizes. From the end-user's perspective, the product remains unchanged and reliable. To me, that’s very good!
- paxys 7mo ago
  My experience is actually the opposite. In the old days there was no expection when and if users would upgrade anything, so vendors had to take extra care to ensure compatibility or they would lose business. People in a single office could be running 6 different versions of Microsoft Office, and the same file had to be viewable and editable on all of them. A company could decide to upgrade to Office 2010 but stay on Windows XP, so the Office division had the finanical incentive to ensure that newer versions would work on an older OS. Nowadays the standard is "you must be on the newest version of everything all the time, or the app won't work". Don't want to upgrade to Win 11? Want to use Firefox instead of Chrome? Don't want all the bells and whistles that come with the newest version of the software? Too bad.
  - guhidalg 7mo ago
    More like "you must be on the newest version of everything all the time, or you will get hacked".
    - thewebguyd 7mo ago
      Because security fixes don't get backported, when they could, and few are still doing separate security vs. feature updates. Even Windows is doing it now with CUs, bundling feature & vulnerability patches together, then deprecating the last version. You don't have a choice anymore, it's "accept the features or else"
  - Gigachad 7mo ago

wtallis 7mo ago

Dropbox is a great example. It's now a fundamentally different product than the original, and has re-created exactly the problem the original solved. There's no longer a good cloud-synced folder tool; everybody has gone back to implementing network filesystems that are much more complex and a badly leaky abstraction.

masterlee_fn 7mo ago
[dead]

erikpukinskis 7mo ago

It’s funny, Express.js tried this. 4.x was basically a complete piece of software. There weren’t any great reasons to change the API. But people hated that. They considered it “unmaintained”. They moved to Koa and Hono because they appeared to be more “actively maintained”.

allreduce 7mo ago
Well it works better if your users have some intelligence^H^H^H wisdom. :)

ivanjermakov 7mo ago

I think it's common in libraries of small to medium size. I often see Haskell and Rust packages that are not updated because full functionality achieved, no bugs and 100% test coverage. Absolutely not the case with enterprise software. Zawinski's law is truer than ever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20165602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20165602

al_borland 7mo ago

I think the hard part is understanding if “finished” software is still maintained. I’ll pick on AppZapper here. It doesn’t need to do much, it’s a Mac app that finds the files related to an application and deletes them, for a complete uninstall. It released in 2006, with v2 coming out in 2010. The website looks like it’s still from that era and the last update was in 2020, almost 6 years ago. To be fair, it’s a cool app, from the “delicious” design era. It makes a ray gun “zap” sound as it uninstalls an apps, for no reason other than to be fun. It’s great. Is it still in active maintenance with nothing to do, and there have been no meaningful changes in how apps are installed in the last 6 years, or has it been abandoned? I really don’t know. If I’m a new user trying to decide if I should pay $20 for this app, what do I do? I don’t want updates for updates sake, as that leads to enshitification, but there needs to be some sign that a user isn’t throwing money at a dead product. Or in the ls example, developing a workflow around a dead tool. A ran into a similar question with Yojimbo. It also launched in 2006. When v2 came out it was a paid upgrade and seemed fairly minor for how much was being charged (at least to a broke college student). It felt like they didn’t really care about it. But here we are 20 years later and it still seems to be going. But it was 14 years between v2 and v3, and the last release was in 2023. With 14 years of support, maybe that v2 would have been a worthwhile upgrade for me in hindsight, but when they go years without an update, I start to question if I should be looking to something with more support. Should a new user buy and invest time in putting their data into something that hasn’t been updated in 3 years, or is that a red flag? These are the things I struggle with.

_qib3 7mo ago
What exactly is wrong with installing an abandoned product? Just because it's abandoned doesn't mean you can't use it.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 7mo ago
  I think the reasonable fear is that the product no longer works. Maybe Apple changed a required API in 2021 and poster would be purchasing a lemon.
- al_borland 7mo ago

pcchristie 7mo ago

I remember the first time I experienced this was an iOS app called Task Eater. It was simple To-dos. Attractive, snappy, everything you could need. The dev released a "final update" where he basically declared it was done. This was pretty early iOS (iPhone 4 era?). The only problem is he never updated it to roll forward to future iOS version/iPhone models and it hasn't been usable for years (and years). This made me search it up - the world moves so fast it's difficult to find any information on it whatsoever.

eviks 7mo ago

Excellent self-owning example: > Dropbox were perfect in 2012 You mean that dumb app that forced you to move files into a single folder instead of adapting to your workflow was prefect? Yeah, no, we shouldn't normalize that, we should push for improvements

rablackburn 7mo ago
Excellent self-owning example: > You mean that dumb app that forced you to move files into a single folder instead of adapting to your workflow was prefect? Users in 2012 were overwhelmingly of the cohort who's metaphor for doing work on a computer was the filesystem. You opened Files with Programs, worked on them, saved them. You wanted your latest Files on all your computers (1), and you wanted to Share them (2). Unless users were on a system managed by a sysadmin there were only really two solutions for problems (1)&(2): you would Email the File (A), or you would copy it to a Floppy/CD/USB (B) and physically move it. Note the caveat of "in absence of a sysadmin". So either on a school or corporate work environment, or if you happened to have a geek in your family/social group who did it as a passion project. Or y'know, if _you_ were the geek you could roll your own. So of course when Dropbox was first introduced to a technical audience they didn't get it. See the infamous thread ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 While you're there, note the tag line in the title of the post "Throw away your USB key" Now rereading your comment it is clearly an example of exactly what OP was referring to: > It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand. If Dropbox did not "adapt to your workflow", then just _don't use Dropbox_. Instead you attack it as "dumb" and demand it change...and those users for whom Dropbox _was_ perfectly adapted don't have their solution anymore. Software doesn't have to be forever changing and chasing user growth; it's not a zero-sum game. The bits don't care if no one uses them. But _people_ care if you take away their bits. > ...we shouldn't normalize that, we should push for improvements Agreed, you should create a new solution and put it out there! Just as suggested by the post you've replied to :)

unselect5917 7mo ago

I wrote my comment before I read yours, but it perfectly explains why software doesn't do that. Sadly I can't take credit for the core idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272024