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Verschlimmbesserung: The Word Your Software Updates Need
- boxed 2mo agoWe already have a word for it? "Misfeature" The opposite is the more interesting word though: hit bug. A bug/mistake/fuckup that turns out to improve the software.
- dylan604 2mo agoThey're not bugs, they're undocumented features
- looperhacks 2mo agoA misfeature is specifically a feature that's just bad, while verschlimmbessern can happen with everything that nobody would call a feature (insert something about xkcd 1172). But yeah, it's pretty close
- bitwize 2mo agoLike combos in Street Fighter II. Also a "hit bug" in a different sense, as it's an unintended effect of how characters strike each other in game.
- Krasnol 2mo agoI'd say enshitification is a good enough word. Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 2mo agoI do think it's part of many people's vocabulary. It's a bit informal. And it's not a word you use every day. But it's definitely a word that gets used when the occasion calls for it, just like the related verb "verschlimmbessern." "Enshittification" isn't the same thing. "Verschlimmbesserung" is when you try to fix a loose connection in a power cord and then no electricity flows at all, or when you try to fix a bad haircut with a trimmer and the haircut ends up looking even worse, etc.
- juvvel 2mo agoOf course it is still widely used.
- icantevenhold 2mo agoDefine widely used; I probably haven’t used it once in the last 15 years and have heard it maybe twice. Source: lifelong German speaker
- ahf8Aithaex7Nai 2mo agoI am even. Source: Lifelong Prime
- remuskaos 2mo agoMaybe you're working with the wrong people? It's uncommon among younger people, but I frequently hear craftsmen say it (who are over 50).
- juvvel 2mo agoI am also a native German and have heard it a lot in my lifetime. Of course not daily, but it is definitely still used today.
- looperhacks 2mo agoIt's certainly used - not in the top 100, but if the situation calls for it, it's not unexpected. There's a big difference between enshitification and "Verschlimmbesserung". The latter has the intent of actually improving things, while the first is making things knowingly worse for profit.
- surreystyles 2mo agoThe word is needed a lot today, the English version however not always applicable in more formal contexts. I'd like to use "Schlimmprovement" for elevated communication.
- HiPhish 2mo ago> I'd say enshitification is a good enough word. Enshittification is when the perpetrator intentionally does make a product worse, like locking previously free features behind a paywall with a firmware update, or covers components of an electric device with some goop to make it unrepairable. Verschlimmbesserung is when the perpetrator has good but ultimately misguided intentions. For example, so middle manager might think that replacing but buttons on a vacuum cleaner with app integration adds value, but ultimately it's replacing something simple, boring and reliable with an overengineered solution that causes more problems than it solves. There is some overlap between the two: someone could make make a Verschlimmbesserung even though he knows no one wants the change, but he can pad his resume with it. In general I'd say enshittification leans more towards malice, while Verschlimmbesserung leans more towards incompetence. > Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany. Yes, it is.
- marton78 2mo agoI hear it often. Especially from my wife. Criticising my repairs.
- car 2mo agoHow about Verscheisserung / Verschisserung? I do like the sound of Verscheissification. As Picard said: Enshitify! (Apologies to my Trekkie friends.)
- 1718627440 2mo ago> Verscheisserung That already means "prank". > Verschisserung "Schisser" means coward.
- levzettelin 2mo agoJust from looking at the title, I feel that this talking about AI in general...
- alhirzel 2mo agoI would probably abbreviate that to v17g.
- dwoldrich 2mo agoValue is now only _extracted_. Place the acquired good into the press and smash it until all but the faintest essence remains among the mash. The squeezings are bottled and saved to pay for future _extractions_. Companies like Valve can continue largely unshittificated because they are private. Once that is no longer the case, all our game rentals will be squozen away from us.
- nazgulsenpai 2mo agoTIL squozen is the past participle of squeeze, but only because I first thought hah this guy is making words up. Foiled again!
- qwertfisch 2mo agoIt is not, it is "squeezed". This is not an irregular verb.
- KineticLensman 2mo agoI looked 'squeeze' up in the (paywalled) Oxford English Dictionary [0]. The are numerous variant forms including 'squoze' and 'squozen': "Also 1600s squeez, squeaze, squease, squese, 1600s–1700s squeese. Also with dialect preterite and past participle 1800s– squoze, past participle 1800s squozen." The OED cites quotations from the 1930s, 1870s, and 1860s that include 'squoze' and 'squozen', for example ‘Orange?’ repeated Waitress No. 1. ‘Do you want it squoze?’ in the Baltimore Sun, 1 Sep 1931. [0] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/squeeze_v?tab=forms#21076314 https://www.oed.com/dictionary/squeeze_v?tab=forms#21076314
- shaftoe444 2mo ago> It's stressful having me head squoze
- ThrowawayR2 2mo agoGabe Newell has an $11bn net worth so he hasn't exactly been not squeezing.
- 2mo ago
- eqvinox 2mo agoIt's actually a verb, "Verschlimmbesserung" is the substantivization. Base: verschlimmbessern Present conjugation: I verschlimmbesser[e], you verschlimmbesserst, he/she/it verschlimmbessert, we verschlimmbesser[e]n, (plural-)you verschlimmbessert, they verschlimmbesser[e]n Past/perfect: verschlimmbessert (e.g. "it got verschlimmbessert") Imperative: verschlimmbesser[e] (e.g. "don't verschlimmbesser that!") The [e] at the end is leftover from an older form, in the cases where I omitted it it would sound archaic to a German speaker, but in the other cases it's equivalent or may even sound better. It's also regionally different. The archaic versions kinda sound south German (Swabian, Bavarian). [ed. made some adjustments] P.S.: "Verbesserung" means improvement, "Verschlimmerung" means worsening/aggravation. The combined word is understood quite specifically though, not just as a combination of the two. It's *not* a normal case of German "paste words together", that's for nouns (you can do it with the substantivization, e.g. Donaudampfschiffverschlimmbesserungskapitän = "captain of verschlimmbessern the steam ships on the Donau", which makes little sense of course). It's not identical to enshittification either, the latter (to me at least) implies intention; verschlimmbessern you can (and probably often will) do by accident.
- schoen 2mo agoCases apply only to nouns; the present and past perfect are called tenses.
- eqvinox 2mo ago(already edited in)
- WesolyKubeczek 2mo agoWould there be a semantic difference between Verschlimmbesserung and Verbesserschlimmung?
- eqvinox 2mo ago無 (the question cannot be answered because it relies on unmet prerequisites) "Verbesserschlimmung" isn't a word in active use & depending on how it (theoretically) were to enter use, its meaning might vary. It could enter usage with identical meaning, or it could mean the opposite: a change intended to worsen things that made them better. It's a bit like "inflammable". (Also: this is why I pointed out it's not formed according to the agglutination rules that apply for concatenated nouns in German. For those, the meaning can be logically derived. This is a portmanteau, those don't quite follow rigid rules.)
- OptionOfT 2mo agoI usually relate this to people chasing good reviews at work. Maintaining a system and keeping it bug-free doesn't get people promoted. Doing something large, inventing a bunch of metrics, and showing that you improve on those metrics does.
- arjan_sch 2mo agoWhat about "worseprovement"
- eqvinox 2mo agoAs a German, I might not have thought of that but would absolutely use it to translate Verschlimmbesserung. Does it sound "normal" enough to native English speakers?
- arjan_sch 2mo agoI'm Dutch, sounds pretty good to me
- inanutshellus 2mo agoIt's definitely a normal-sounding, memorable word for us native English speakers. Meanwhile I won't be able to remember that German word longer than it takes me to close this tab. Vershumthingsomething.
- groestl 2mo agoThumbs up, let's settle on that translation
- clbrmbr 2mo agoIt's totally plausible portmanteau. I get the feeling thought that it sounds more marked in English than in German where these kind of mashups are formed more freely.
- ThrowawayR2 2mo agoThe sibling post's "disimprovement" sounds more natural and has parallel form with pre-existing broadly accepted English words like "disincentive" and "disinfect".
- eqvinox 2mo agoNot sure if that's just me, but "disimprovement" sounds like *removing* an improvement that was previously there…
- 345t36g5g35gt5 2mo agohttps://www.sandpile.org/x86/opc_enc.htm#:~:text=Verschlimmbesserung https://www.sandpile.org/x86/opc_enc.htm#:~:text=Verschlimmb...
- grishka 2mo agoThe modern tech industry is fundamentally broken, the incentive structure is wrong. No one even knows how to ship finished software any more. Everything's a perpetual beta now. It makes me really sad.
- devindotcom 2mo ago>attempted improvement that only makes things worse Unless I'm mistaken, Russian has a wonderful idiom for this: "bear job"
- remuskaos 2mo agoThat actually also exists in German! Bärendienst, although it is not 100% the same as Verschlimmbesserung.
- lelandfe 2mo agoGoogle sez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bear_and_the_Gardener#Idioms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bear_and_the_Gardener#Idio... > The story... relates how a solitary gardener encounters a lonely bear and they decide to become companions. One of the bear's duties is to keep the flies off his friend when he takes a nap. Unable to drive off a persistent fly, the bear seizes a paving stone to crush it and kills the gardener as well > [..] > The fable has given to the French language the idiom le pavé de l'ours (the bear's paving stone) and to German Bärendienst (a bear's service), both used for doing somebody or something a disservice or bad turn and sometimes for any ill-considered action with an unfortunate result. The Danish and Norwegian word bjørnetjeneste (bear-service) has similar meanings and the idiom also appears in other European languages. Apparently the source of Russian's, too: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%B6%D1%8C%D1%8F_%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B0 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%B5...
- pndy 2mo agoIt's present in both Polish and Czech as well but rarely used
- illiac786 2mo agoCan you post the word in Russian?
- staticshock 2mo agoмедвежья услуга
- OroPla 2mo agoGerman here. A "Verschlimmbesserung" is something that makes one part better and another part worse. If it only makes things worse you don't need a German word for it, you can just call it worse. For things that were intended good, but ended up bad, there's an English idiom: the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- renehsz 2mo agoMy understanding is that a Verschlimmbesserung stems from a genuine intent to improve something, even though it ultimately has the opposite effect.
- OroPla 2mo agoI don't remember hearing or using it in this context. It's pretty rare that the goal was to make something worse and if the outcome is only bad, you can just call it bad, right? The word is only needed to communicate that there were good and bad outcomes.
- jakzurr 2mo agoThe painting "restoration" at the end of the article is hilarious! (OMG I hope it's just a joke.)
- WesolyKubeczek 2mo ago„Verschlimbesserung” is what your spouse thinks about each of your improvements to the home automation setup, or, indeed, the whole idea of home automation.
- 6c696e7578 2mo agoOffice 2003 is a terrible example, office is a product that deliberately makes one part worse on each "upgrade" so that the consumer has a reason to upgrade to another release.
- gpvos 2mo agoThat's why it specifies 2003, that's about the point when Office had all the features and usability one needs. The Office versions after that are worse.
- shevy-java 2mo ago"It is called Verschlimmbesserung: an attempted improvement that only makes things worse." Hmmm. So, the literal transation would be: "Verschlimm" - worsen, negative, step back. "Besserung" - improvement, getting better than before. So, I would translate it as "an effort to improve something but actually making it worse in the process". There is an old video clip in german about this, actually; I think it was from Loriot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI Video quality is bad, there are probably better ones but it has english subtitles. The idea here is basically the guy tries to improve something, but in the end kind of causes the whole room to become devastated. That's kind of Verschlimmbesserung: meaning to do well, but failing to do so and causing more harm than good. (Also in the comments people connect this to Friedrich Merz; the guy is really losing popular support by the minute now. Just recently where he was unhappy how real people ask him critical questions.)
- BrenBarn 2mo agoIt's not totally clear from the examples given, but I feel like in some cases these changes aren't a genuine effort to improve things. They're just a sort of cycle of changing things to chase fads or look busy.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mjcohen 2mo agoThe Reason Foundation has a series of Youtube videos about things that were done with good intentions but ended up making things worse.
- gnarlouse 2mo agoDoes that mean Verbesserschlimmung is "improving things for nothing" because the same can be said of AI.
- igkougkousis 2mo ago[flagged]
- kaiji1126 2mo ago[flagged]
- vit787 2mo ago[dead]
- zoom6628 2mo agoGlorious word to describe just about every iOS update ever.
- andai 2mo agoThe Matrix was right. Civilization peaked at Skeumorphism. Pure unfiltered soul.
- andai 2mo agoPeople equate work with value. That's largely a function of incentives. If a startup could have been a 100 line PHP script, instead of 50 microservices, then you wouldn't be able to work on it for the next 10 years, and hire 5 of your buds from school.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoLove it. The German language has words for almost anything; especially if it’s cynical. I’m told that’s because the language is designed to synthesize words. I wouldn’t know. I don’t speak German (but I speak English, which has German roots). I once looked at an etymology diagram, and was surprised to see Low German is the root for a whole shitton of modern languages. I think that may be because it was a trade language.
- zby 2mo agoIn the age of LLMs it is important to have vocabulary that survives when taken out of context - German nouns fit that very well. In my own project I decided to use phrases of two words (often with a hyphen) for all technical terms (terms that have special meaning in my project). And by the way I also started using Auftragstaktik as an anchor for a methodology of writing plans and prompts.
- herbst 2mo agoIt's not even funny how often that word sounds in my head these days
- pwdisswordfishq 2mo agoOr in English: "misfeature".