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Ask HN: Why don't we optimize for stability?

2 points by dnsworks ↗ HN
Have you ever noticed how much time you spend quitting Safari or Firefox? Just exiting the program. Sometimes it's immediately, sometimes it's 20 minutes, at least 50% of the time it's `kill -9 motherfucker.app`

Why? Let me throw down the gauntlet, I'll pay $10k tomorrow for an Apple web browser that will never fucking crash on me.

There must be a market of people, just like me, who are fed up with browsers, mail clients, and basically all desktop software because it's so unreliable and who are more than happy to pay a premium, even an outrageous premium, to stop screwing around with software and get back to our real work.

Tomorrow I could (theoretically) go out and spend $10k on a hand-crafted work of art guitar from a luthier, or $200k for a mostly handcrafted precision automobile. For $100k I can go into space, but for no amount of money can I buy software that doesn't make me want to throw my computer into the swimming pool.

Will we ever see a boutique market of consumer software that's written with stability and quality in mind? I don't care that my web browser can clean up my neighbor's dogshit and tell me which AS number the website I'm looking at is on (21844, by the way), I just want to get my work done.

I'm not really interested in why Firefox, Safari, and Chrome all suck. I know why, it's because all software sucks. I'm a consumer willing to pay money, lots of it, for a browser that doesn't suck. Build it and sell it to me.

6 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 29.0 ms ] thread
Skywing
I agree, I do hate when things crash. But, I have to say, it has been a long time since something has crashed on me. I use Chrome on my macbook and it has never crashed, that I can recall.

At the same time, though, my boss at work is somehow capable of making everything he touches crash. He has destroyed windows and apple operating systems like they're nothing.

s3graham
Chrome? I can't recall it crashing recently. Maybe it sucks on Mac?
benologist
I kill Opera.exe more often than not. It takes only a few hours for it to reach 600 or 700 meg of ram and get stroppy, then it wants a fricking minute plus to actually close.

It's quite annoying.

syllogism
The feature set in Opera is killer, and I had some loyalty because I feel like they've been behind some of the major advances in browser usability (tabs!), and haven't been given much credit.

But I eventually gave up. Google Chrome doesn't even have bloody mouse gestures working on linux, but it's fast and stable, and has high correctness.

petervandijck
I run Chrome on Windows 7 and never, ever have to kill it.

Never.

cperciva
Why don't we optimize for stability? Some of us do. It just happens that we're not writing web browsers.