I think software has always been terribly buggy. Back in the day, things would crash (including your entire OS in many cases) all the time. These days, it's more often smaller, stupid UX issues, but that's been the situation for a few years. I've seen no difference over the past six months.
We've always had bugs. Good chance that it's largely confirmation bias - you're familiar with how software development has changed in the past 6 months, and especially if you don't like it, any time you see a bug or a problem, you'll attribute it to that.
nah, things are worse. Basic userfacing components in windows frequently shit the bed. File explorer in W11 is near unsuable for example. grim state of affairs. Problem extends to many other platforms at scales where its not a quirk here or there, but rather, I can not longer use system instability and unexpected behaviour as a signal that maybe something is wrong that needs fixing.
Bugs and errors were rare and spaced out enough in the past, that when they happened I'd wonder if hardware was on it's way out, or if I broke something. Now, I simply assume software is fucked and I am almost always right.
I had one encounter with an obviously vibe coded website last year. Everything looked great, but nothing worked. Had to deal with the company over email.
Things might be better now, but that was a clear warning of what future may hold.
Not only buggier, but less usable overall. We can not blame everything on AI. For example events discovery platforms and ticket platforms were way better decade ago, you could search by popularity, friends going to the same event and there wasn’t as much fragmentation. That part you could blame on Cambridge Analytica scandal and late capitalism love of algorithmic feeds
"weak computers" is the funniest part. The computer I'm typing this on *right now* is orders of magnitude faster then the Athlon XP processor that i was using in 2003, but it doesn't feel much faster. I think that hardware advancement is just slower then software bloat...
iOS is definitely buggier. It used to be a silky smooth experience but it's degraded significantly in the last year or so. Safari on iOS, in particular, is very bad. Lots of problems in Adobe Creative Cloud on Win 11 (primarily Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) in recent months too.
It's similar to the ElectronJS desktop app problem. Sure the desktop apps use a lot more system resources, but it's doubtful those apps would have been created in the first place if it wasn't for the speedup of development allowed by ElectronJS.
In this case, sure software is buggier, but there's also a ton more software+features that wouldn't have existed before AI coding tools.
Electron apps are selected for things that are harmful to your user experience.
That is, if you know how to make Electron apps you also know how to make web applications and web applications are generally superior and preferred by users. No install, no bloated runtime, "just works", say it again "JUST WORKS!"
Any time somebody makes an Electron app there is a reason why they make an Electron app and it usually is a bad reason. For instance, Electron apps can live in your tray and make your computer harder to use by hiding behind twisty little icons that all look alike, popping up and covering other things that live in the tray, etc. Defying the usual procedures for starting and stopping apps, finding and moving windows, etc.
And of course the whole point of living in the tray is running all the time, sucking RAM all the time, sucking CPU all the time, sucking GPU all the time, sucking network bandwidth, etc. In short, sucking.
I mostly feel this on Microsoft stuff. O365 browser stuff was always buggy, but last month I had to fight to zoom in on something in PowerPoint. Pagination in Azure ML randomly broke, it took them a month to fix it.
Atlassian is also a bug factory, but I did not expect anything better of them. Each UI update they did to Confluence and Jira just made everything more confusing in the last 10 years.
Websites and mobile apps, definitely. Every time a typical proprietary mobile app updates I wonder what they will break. They always do break something or remove a feature I want.
Desktop apps, not in general. Some work better, like KDE's DE has fixed some irritants.
It's definitely been buggier for a while now. It's already been an issue for a decade or so due to the "release minimum viable product, fix problems with patches/updates model" (especially in the world of video games), but the rise of AI has only made the issue more apparent. Microsoft is the biggest example here (with Windows 11 seemingly screwing up something massive in every update), but other companies like Google and Meta haven't been as reliable either.
I thought about writing a comedy, set in the far future, where everything looks beautiful but nothing works right and it's just accepted (almost unnoticed) as a running gag throughout the film. Now I wonder how prescient that would be.
There has been a steady decline for decades. Release early, release often. One example: Apple used to have a thing called Gold Master release when updating software was not as immediate. The GM programs met a high bar for quality. Not so much anymore… the attitude is we can just release a new version later this week. There also used to be a thing called backwards compatibility… now no one thinks twice about breaking code on older platforms.
This is the correct take. QA was under attack the entire Agile(TM) cycle we just exited. Now with agentic coding, the only thing keeping it on the rails is TDD. Either you write the tests or you write the spec.
You are also responsible for the output. Welcome to the New Age. Management is just as clueless as they have ever been (some more than others) and yet most of them lack the intelligence to know exactly how it all works. Hell, there’s still plenty of engineers that don’t know how it all works.
Eventually, when you come to understanding or you reach that “enlightenment” stage, no corporate BS will penetrate you and you’ll forever see past their shenanigans. At this stage though you’ll be a grey beard and be unemployable. So they cut out anyone who knows the BS to bring in folks who believe the BS so they can continue shipping BS.
What I have noticed is that graybeards who work for SV-style companies are treated as disposable, incompetent, etc. But outside of that, things aren't as bad as people think, and most dev jobs aren't in those companies.
Another elephant in the room is the widespread impact of neverending COVID re-infections of people who don't wear N95s in public (most people). Vaccines don't prevent transmission, which leaves everyone open to acquiring long COVID. Long COVID is very likely underdiagnosed due to widespread ignorance, and not helping matters is that 40% of infections are asymptomatic during the acute phase.
Long COVID can include issues with memory and risk taking.
I don't think software is the only field impacted by this, but it's undoubtedly one of them considering how few people take proper precautions via regular N95 usage.
Respectfully, that's a bit of a stretch. Impaired human memory and increased risk taking are coefficients that would impact far more industries than software. I think the notion is that software, in particular, seems buggier. IF these side effects of repeated COVID infection have anything to do with software bugs, I would think it's contribution would be dramatically smaller than say LLM assisted coding, rapid merging of code, lack of human review.
It's pretty hard to separate this from confirmation bias. But I've had to disable the YouTube app and switch to mobile web because it would just buffer nonstop on everything; never had issues like with it like this before.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 57.3 ms ] threadBugs and errors were rare and spaced out enough in the past, that when they happened I'd wonder if hardware was on it's way out, or if I broke something. Now, I simply assume software is fucked and I am almost always right.
Things might be better now, but that was a clear warning of what future may hold.
Opencode: pegs a core
Paypal: pegs a core
Chatgpt: pegs a core
In this case, sure software is buggier, but there's also a ton more software+features that wouldn't have existed before AI coding tools.
That is, if you know how to make Electron apps you also know how to make web applications and web applications are generally superior and preferred by users. No install, no bloated runtime, "just works", say it again "JUST WORKS!"
Any time somebody makes an Electron app there is a reason why they make an Electron app and it usually is a bad reason. For instance, Electron apps can live in your tray and make your computer harder to use by hiding behind twisty little icons that all look alike, popping up and covering other things that live in the tray, etc. Defying the usual procedures for starting and stopping apps, finding and moving windows, etc.
And of course the whole point of living in the tray is running all the time, sucking RAM all the time, sucking CPU all the time, sucking GPU all the time, sucking network bandwidth, etc. In short, sucking.
Atlassian is also a bug factory, but I did not expect anything better of them. Each UI update they did to Confluence and Jira just made everything more confusing in the last 10 years.
Desktop apps, not in general. Some work better, like KDE's DE has fixed some irritants.
Core libs/software have never been better, eg I have had much better luck with stuff like ffmpeg and virsh than ever before.
If it has a UI and targeted at consumers though? Bug city.
QA teams were fired/never hired in the first place (put onto the Devs/support/customer to report and test)
Management want features and selling not Lovability and polish. We are just hitting an all time of make make make.
You are also responsible for the output. Welcome to the New Age. Management is just as clueless as they have ever been (some more than others) and yet most of them lack the intelligence to know exactly how it all works. Hell, there’s still plenty of engineers that don’t know how it all works.
Eventually, when you come to understanding or you reach that “enlightenment” stage, no corporate BS will penetrate you and you’ll forever see past their shenanigans. At this stage though you’ll be a grey beard and be unemployable. So they cut out anyone who knows the BS to bring in folks who believe the BS so they can continue shipping BS.
> At this stage though you’ll be a grey beard and be unemployable.
isn't as true as people think. I'm a graybeard and remain very much in demand, as do the majority of the graybeards I know.
Long COVID can include issues with memory and risk taking.
https://www.camh.ca/en/camh-news-and-stories/rsch-new-study-...
I don't think software is the only field impacted by this, but it's undoubtedly one of them considering how few people take proper precautions via regular N95 usage.
Just a couple of examples:
- Linux kernel ai commits (https://lunduke.substack.com/p/ai-submissions-to-linux-hits-...)
- Omarchy 4 30k lines of ai generated code (https://x.com/dhh/status/2057907663967543618)