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Comment by temptossr344 | Hacker News Reader

Apparently this person was not using technology any time before the iPhone?

Quirks, useless error messages, website rendering problems... they've been around forever. Has this person even tried to install software packages on Linux 10-15+ years ago?

Have software developers given up?

I'd argue the vast majority never cared.

And really, why bother caring so much that you take to the web glorifying others glitches?

We hear about data theft stories, companies shutting down due to data loss fuckups... life goes on. It's shit that many people are burned because of these things, but really our society does not care. The loss is absorbed for the most part and we move on.

Stop being so dismayed with the world, or how other people aren't as good at things as you are. Move along.

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I did use technology before the iPhone, but I don't remember being as frustrated by it as I am now.

The most frustrating thing is that we seem to be getting worse, not better. We're not learning from mistakes, we're too busy churning out the next buggy release to review the mistakes in the last one :(

When huge software companies like Google and Microsoft are churning out buggy crap, it's easy to see why others assume they can't do any better.

Maybe a recency bias. I have used computers since I was a kid, my earliest memories are Windows 95 but I am sure there was some before then too. I remember constant BSOD, constant application-crashing bugs with vague error messages, no ability to Google the solution to the problems you do have. Sometimes a game wouldn't work and there was really nothing you could do to even troubleshoot.

I doubt we're getting worse. At worst, we're staying even as complexity grows tremendously. I would guess we're probably improving slightly despite insane growth in complexity.

I would say that with great size, like Google and Microsoft, comes a greater difficulty in making bug-free products. Too small and you don't have the funding, but the sweet size is probably somewhere between a "small business" and "Google". Companies the size of Google have a lot of bureaucracy. They have a million products. They have thousands of developers. And in the end, the majority of the business doesn't even come from these glitchy products. It's understandable that noone is really up in arms over these bugs because upper management doesn't give a shit, and the developers only give a shit in so far that they aren't fired. Sometimes you'll have developers who care because of pride in their work, but they're the minority.

it's not getting worse, we're just using software in so many more places today. seeing bugs is simply becoming more frequent.

This probably does explain a lot of it!

In the good old days, you'd just turn it off then on again.

The reason management doesn't care is that it isn't important. If a bug eventuates on a web page, the impact is minimal usually.

There are contingencies if a FAQ page is blank like in the article example. The user can visit the contacts page and email their question. Crisis averted.

Most of this web stuff is relatively trivial in terms of impact.

I used to work in ASIC development where the impact of a bug is massive. Hence the verification effort and rigor should be much higher.

Or a case of Selective Perception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_perception

When my friend was talking about buying a Prius, he saw Priuses everywhere for a few weeks. It's not that the Priuses weren't there before: it's just that he didn't notice them as much before.

Sorry but, ehm, no. Maybe you don't remember it but I surely do. A lot more "it just doesn't work" 20 years ago than today.

Maybe I just didn't experience it the same. I never claimed this experience is everyones; I only write about my own :)

It sounds like you have given up.

You know what at least one problem is, I bet you have ideas about how to fix it too.

The thesis is that because this person ran across a few glitches in a small subset of systems "programmers" have all given up. It continues to then re-count some bad interactions with customer service types and an anonymous Twitter user.

Seriously? That's it?

And this leads him to believe programmers everywhere have quit caring?

How does this even hold up? You realize it's not necessarily a programmer at many a institution prioritizing work. You realize that the power company customer service person probably will have zero clue what the issue is?

This is poorly thought out blog spam.

I expect the other 95% of the time, shit works just fine. But blog posts about everything working just fine don't generate hits.

Only graphic card issue if 10 years ago. not much.Currently i still confuse why apple don't follow update like linux.Just to download XCODE 5GB every update is very annoyance.

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