Modern software development is cancer | Hacker News Reader

Modern software development is cancer

dedoimedo.com

18 points1ark20 comments

Emotionally, I'm with the author, but I need to point out, for balance, that not everything is cancer.

GIT has some weird commands, but even I think it's awesome. (Way better than zip files on a stack of floppies for backup)

I've come to accept UTF8, and UTF32 as worth successors to ASCII

Time travel debugging is going to be awesome, if I ever get to use it.

Portable applications solve a lot of issues, and never need to be installed.

αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε is even better, cross platform done right!

I still love Pascal, and Lazarus (Delphi priced me out) but lots of folks don't have general purpose computers any more, I feel sad for all the folks who have to settle for apps instead of full fledged native desktop programs.

What's with the greek characters?

it's the literal name of the product https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24256883

"Because for developers, this is a lovely and colorful playground. This is what they breathe and live. For end users, it's a nightmare designed by amateurs."

At last, someone who understands the problem and who can actually articulate it.

It would be nice to see the software industry become a true engineering profession like, say chemical, civil and electrical engineering but I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll not live long enough to ever see it.

Software engineering is the only place where 'its too hard' is used as an excuse to not use superior technologies like rust, haskell, or even c++, which actually offer better discipline than many other commonly used languages.

Right, imagine say a civil engineer building a bridge saying 'I won't bother working out the actual stresses on the trusses, I'll just estimate them from an earlier job' because it's boring--unfortunately much of good engineering is very tedious and boring, the hard slog comes with the territory.

BTW, the reason I said I'd likely not live to see software development become a profession is because the same sentiments as this blog were echoed in this Scientific American article some 27 years ago and precious little has changed for the better since then:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247573088_Software'...

I think the italicized heading on page 87 sums the matter up beautifully.

"Despite 50 years of progress, the software industry remains years — perhaps decades — short of the mature engineering discipline needed to meet the demands of an information-age society"

It's true about the industry, but that is because the industry has grown faster than the profession. There is a group of software engineers who care. They're just completely overshadowed by the mind-boggling amount being produced by university programs and coder bootcamps who don't care.

Why strive for that, when we can just claim the title? (And then rationalize that we earn it by applying whatever passes for ‘rigor’ in our trade)

Sooner or later you'll be caught out. Reckon it won't be too long before AI - perhaps aided by quantum computers - will be able to disassemble your compiled code in seconds with all symbols, etc., print listings and meaningful comments.

Then we'll see who has egg on their faces! It'll be very interesting to see all the red blushes when the bugs and spaghetti code are exposed for all the world to see.

Rigor will be the order of the day when developers can no longer hide behind the obfuscation of compilation.

;-)

>It would be nice to see the software industry become a true engineering profession like, say chemical, civil and electrical engineering

All paid less.

Only for now.

>It would be nice to see the software industry become a true engineering profession

What would you have us profess?

Those in the medical profession have the Hippocratic Oath

There are oaths of admission for Lawyers, different in every state, of course

Many Engineers trained in Canada wear the iron ring

Again, what would you have all of us profess?

We can't even agree on obvious things, like the fact that tabs and null terminated strings are the work of Satan. ;-)

Pulseaudio, systemd, if you look at it, it is the same dangerous author that inflicted that on us.

One that should have been banned to use a computer long time ago but sadly can use red hat to push mainstream all his crap!

I may not agree with EVERYthing but I love and identify with the ornery writing style.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. We're all trapped in an economy where not growing/"innovating" is death. If a company dared announce they were done building and would just go into maintenance mode, their stock would fall of a cliff. One of the stated mandates of the Fed is maximum employment. They structurally require 100M (or whatever the number of working age adults is) jobs, so yes we will come up with a 100M jobs even if 50M are useless because everyone needs to eat.

Modern software development is only becoming cancerous in the same way as any other established industry. There's no use being all sad about it, every other white collar profession has already been through this, and these things are not for us plebs to decide. Just go in and half ass your 4 meetings a day job building the 10000th note taking app, the economy demands it. If we don't make the stonks go up then what are we doing anyways?

Wow what a bunch of nonsense. I know this is a rant but the author gets so many things wrong I can’t respect their opinion at all

Time to double your medication.

Dude is jaded.

lmao. this.

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