Dysfunctional state of modern software

[green.pixel]

Good read about the dysfunctional, bloated state of modern software.

Software disenchantment


I’ve been programming for 15 years now. Recently our industry’s lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence started really getting to me, to the point of me getting depressed by my own career and the IT in general.

Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same.

Only in software, it’s fine if a program runs at 1% or even 0.01% of the possible performance. Everybody just seems to be ok with it. People are often even proud about how much inefficient it is, as in “why should we worry, computers are fast enough”:

@tveastman: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days ​

You’ve probably heard this mantra: “programmer time is more expensive than computer time”. What it means basically is that we’re wasting computers at an unprecedented scale. Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time.

...

 

[Cyan]

Good read about the dysfunctional, bloated state of modern software.

had read this some time ago, and this got my attention. Totally right.

Modern text editors have higher latency than 42-year-old Emacs. Text editors! What can be simpler? On each keystroke, all you have to do is update tiny rectangular region and modern text editors can’t do that in 16ms. It’s a lot of time. A LOT. A 3D game can fill the whole screen with hundreds of thousands (!!!) of polygons in the same 16ms and also process input, recalculate the world and dynamically load/unload resources. How come?

 

[tuna]

We discussed this guy's whining in another thread.

 

[Davros]

He has a point, and the reason is time is now more valuable than cpu cycles and memory
Us old timers remember hunting down different cdrom drivers because it freed up an extra 8k of conventional memory
that doesnt happen any more.
and if I was still programming I doubt I would be changing int to byte when possible to save 8bits

 

[tuna]

Performance (however you measure it) matters for a lot of stuff. But instead of whining you can
1) measure
and
2) use the stuff that satisfies your desired performance.

 

[milk]

Are you guys seriously dissing this? Aren't we technology enthusiasts? Don't you agree 100% with all said in that post. Even if it is somewhat repeated, I think it actually hasn't been said enough. I absolutely hate how inneficient software is. I hate it that I have no choice but to buy a new phone and computer every 3 years if I just want to keep using it the same way I was before. This talking point is important and it's worth repeating as many times as it takes.

 

[tuna]

I absolutely hate how inneficient software is.

Why do you not use efficient software then?

 

[tuna]

I hate it that I have no choice but to buy a new phone and computer every 3 years if I just want to keep using it the same way I was before.

Why do you have to do that? Do you have a magical computer that becomes slower after 3 years?

 

[milk]

Why do you have to do that? Do you have a magical computer that becomes slower after 3 years?

Yes. I had a old iMac that would get noticibly slower with every new OSX update. After I just stopped updating, some software couldn't update as well. Chrome and Safari for example. As those two were not updating anymore, some websites would not open anymore. Basic shit. It was not a 3 y.o. computer honestly. It was 8. Still. Google Maps and YouTube should still be able to open on a 8 years old iMac. At least in a basic manner.
I think you underestimate the state of utter wrecklesness at which modern software development is at.

 

[milk]

Why do you not use efficient software then?

I always try to go for the less inefficient options and still they aren't great. A browser that is not chrome will just not open a lot of pages correctly, for example. Try working with graphic design without using Industry's standard Adobe Software... Try living a normal life within modern society without Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, Chrome, Facebook, Windows, Gmail... It's an utter uphill battle.

 

[BRiT]

Its so easy to function without Facebook and iOS and OSX. More people should do so.

 

[milk]

Its so easy to function without Facebook and iOS and OSX. More people should do so.

Not so easy depending on what you work with and the circles you interact. People often use facbook/messenger as their main tool for communication, certain events ask you to post your name on their FB event Page's timeline to get a discount. Group projects are often posted on Google Drive. These are just some examples. This talk that you can go be a hermit and grow your own wheat is a lazy excuse to be lenient with the absurdity of modern software industry.
EDIT: There are lots of things that are only done through Twitter and I miss out on because I don't wanna open an account there too.

 

[BRiT]

Dont be a sheeple. Its easy. Just make the choice.

 

[milk]

Dont be a sheeple. Its easy. Just make the choice.

Yes, I'll tell a potential client: "no what's app, sorry, I'm not a sheeple like you. Just install Tor Messenger exclusively to talk to me. BRiT said it's easy.

 

[BRiT]

You have a choice. It's not forced on you.

 

[rcf]

The author isn't just talking about bloat and lack of performance but also about bugs, glitches and the fragility of modern software, where random stuff happens and nobody knows why (for example just look at the Windows10 thread where people complain about the Start Menu not working anymore).
He also mentions programmers constantly reinventing the wheel for no good reason and still struggling with the same issues (probably because most of them don't know the history of their own field).

 

[milk]

You have a choice. It's not forced on you.

Look, you are correct. I'm not here yelling "hey, somebody fix all world problems form me!" I'm merely embracing this guy's pointing out how many things are crazily bellow optimal while a whole industry keeps building more ON TOP of the shaky base they didn't finish up completely on the first time.
The world certainly has no obligation to be perfect for me. But I at least am happy to know there are software engineers out there who are tired of adding yet new features that barely work to products that are full of other features that don't work from the past 30 years.
We shouldn't always complain, but we shouldn't never complain either.

 

[tuna]

Yes. I had a old iMac that would get noticibly slower with every new OSX update. After I just stopped updating, some software couldn't update as well. Chrome and Safari for example. As those two were not updating anymore, some websites would not open anymore. Basic shit. It was not a 3 y.o. computer honestly. It was 8. Still. Google Maps and YouTube should still be able to open on a 8 years old iMac. At least in a basic manner.
I think you underestimate the state of utter wrecklesness at which modern software development is at.

You had a computer that ran fast software. Then you ran slow software on it and now you complain that the computer is slow? If you do not want the new functionality, security etc, you do not have to update your software.

Modern web sites are software delivered as javascript to your browser. And there are many other browsers other than Chrome and Safari.

I think you underestimate the state of utter wrecklesness at which modern software development is at.

I work in modern software development. Do not underestimate the whiners in the world.

The author isn't just talking about bloat and lack of performance but also about bugs, glitches and the fragility of modern software, where random stuff happens and nobody knows why (for example just look at the Windows10 thread where people complain about the Start Menu not working anymore).

Yet people continue to use windows. I have heard people complain about windows since 1997, but for desktop use it is still the most used OS by a wide margin. So why should MS change?

 

[tuna]

We shouldn't always complain, but we shouldn't never complain either.

Voting with your wallet and usage is probably more effective.

 

[milk]

Voting with your wallet and usage is probably more effective.

Trust me, I do that as much as possible within my lifestyle while weighted against my other priorities.
Still, I just like when the point of software/hardware ineficiency, overgenineering and instability is brought up because I feel like the general public has no idea how bad it actually is. It's not like our gadgets operate at half or a third of the speed they could, or that battery could last a couple hours more, I'm sure they could be multiple thousand times faster, if software was more tight and neat. And it's not like it's a avoidable, most problems and bugs riddling software today are modern versions of things discovered and learned at the birth of computing, and we've had knowledge of best practices to avoid the. since then, it just doesn't get used because our industry is drunk on it's own fetish for speed of innovation regardless of how much of that innovation ends up forgotten before it ever actually gets used. The sheer crazy ammout of poorly implemented abstraction layer and virtualization on top of abstraction layer doing redundant work many times over piles up to make almost everything be millions of times slower than they needed to be. It's not a small detail, it's a Frankenstein monster of planetary proportions.
This wastes time, patience, sanity, energy, and generates tons of garbage, that could be avoided.