bert hubert 🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦Mar 13
Tempted to write a post that software development lost the plot a long time ago, and that the recent LLM developments are merely the icing on that cake. Software these days is not the painstaking work by people like @bagder or @hyc or @vitaut who write the best code they possibly can. Over the past decade, "the software world" has been developing in a very different way than that.
Show threadMartin HoffmannMar 13

@bert_hubert Dunno. We complained about poorly flung together software back in the nineties. There might be more of it now, but there also is much much more software now.

Similarly, people complain that they can’t find a plumber who cares. Maybe software is just a regular craft now?

Show threadGhost Letters

@partim @bert_hubert

I also wonder why "in the past software was so much better" trope resonates with so many devs. Of course it run on hardware that was a lot weaker - it was bound to by what was available.

But "all" programs, up to OS crashed constantly and it was perceived as absolutely normal. The required RAM doubled with every Windows release for 20 years. Configuring LAN was a nightmare for non experts. Every hardware needed a custom driver. The web was slow and full of crazy IE tweaks

Mar 13 at 7:49pmWeb
Show threadErin 💽✨Mar 14

@ghost_letters @partim @bert_hubert I remember the crashes, but I also remember (and have re-experienced) how running e.g. an older version of Windows on contemporary hardware feels so much more responsive than modern versions (or often modern Linux, or macOS, or similar).

I don’t necessarily think they were actually faster, but they were better at giving feedback.

Show threadLisPiMar 14

@ghost_letters @partim @bert_hubert It really depends on what you do/did.

I'd say the web was better before those absurd JS UI frameworks really picked up (driving efficiency and usability into the ground), but then I also just didn't use the nightmarish flash/java proprietary malware nightmare sites either so those aren't relevant as a counter-point to me.

Games did somewhat improve in their stability, for that all they're still not amazing.

(There is no reasonable expectation for a game to ever crash without some manner of hardware failure like memory corruption.)