After all having some people see and complain about things getting worse doesn't mean that said things will stop getting worse if most people don't care or even noticing them getting worse to do something about it.
For a chuckle try running old software on a modern computer (fire up dos box and run WordPerfect or something) and be amazed at the speed of the thing. that is why we built a faster computer :)
One of my favorite examples: Lego Island's driving mechanic is tied to frame rate, so on a modern machine tapping left or right will fling your car 90+ degrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CmqbccCqI0
I discovered this playing the old DOS RPG Drakkhen, where there was a tower with a shark in its moat, circling around. It would jump and eat your characters if they happened to cross the bridge at the wrong moment. The funny thing is its speed was based on the processor clock (the game was released in 1989) and if you played the game with a faster processor, the shark would be too fast to be avoided. Push the turbo button, reduce clock speed, problem solved.
Then this thing starts becoming profitable in the sense of bringing street cred and money and new kind of people rush in with their new ideas how to use this new thing. These new people don't share the same ideas with the original believers but they know how to build machinery around it to make it profitable and appeal for the masses. The new thing that was supposed to change the world becomes a concentrated and optimised version of the things before it.
The believers then become bitter purists and try to fight the new order by disowning the current technologies or methods and cater for the niche hipster elitist circles when the rest continues do their thing.
You can see it in everything, you can see it in printing press you can see it in Radio, you can see it in TV, you can see it in things that are not media: cars, clothing, shaving, coffee - everything.
Things don't become worse, they just become mainstream and that mass adoption is run not by purists but by people with no regard to the original ideals of the technology and masses love it this way and stays this way until its made obsolete by something else.
The feature where Firefox repeatedly changed your preferences and helpfully showed PDF with the JavaScript jank was pretty terrible. Changing that preference a third time won't make it any more charming. Yes, yes, the cattle are supposed to be OK with the "movement" of their cheese, move along now, nothing to see here.
> ... clothing, shaving, coffee - everything
Uh, no. Coffee in America started out cheap and for the masses (following some sort of Tea Party, I think it was) and then even more for the masses (now with pre-ground beans, instead of using the mill in the stock of your Sharps Carbine) and only very recently has there been a movement towards not-mainstream "hipster elitist circle" coffee made by purists.
> Things don't become worse
This is not what I've read; for example, British church organ making went through a rough patch around the decade of 1900 or so. With a little study of history more such examples could doubtless be found. One might even be optimistic that the modern web might pull itself out of the "big miasma"[1] that it has sunk into. But if the powers that be are blind to criticism, and go on about "tooling issues" or whatever, eh, it might be a while before changes can be made for the better.
By the way, Arnold Toynbee said some pretty funny things about blind elites.
[1] gemini://diesenbacher.net/
This is not about ideals, this is about foisting crap on the world that literally nobody wants or needs.
Just kidding, back in my day kids assumed the same thing.
Also, this exact conversation has been happening since the web was created. Linked article is evidence of that.
In a more practical way though, some new things are good, some new thing are bad. It makes sense to adopt good stuff and cut off the bad. Deck? Mostly good. Requiring phone number to play a game? Bad. Naturally, it is a very subjective process and we are bound to disagree on details.
Not that long ago a family member tried to use the same argument used here ( its a generational thing; old people just hate new stuff ) when trying to convince that Venmo is actually good as I was trying to gently indicate that maybe a payment system that by default announces to the world[1] I just spent X on Y may not be the best thing since sliced bread. Working near that space I was amused, but each to their own ( and I certainly am not going to tell the guy how to raise his kids ).
[1]https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/venmo-explains-why-transac...
A browser that can render text, and not much beside the text, emphasizes the text of a page, which, for many pages, is the content the user came for. Everything else is fluff.
In modern times, "Reader mode" in browsers does the same thing: removes fluff to make reading easier.
Of course it's great that now browsers support advanced features and enable amazing interactive pages like https://ciechanow.ski/internal-combustion-engine/, or just "simple" GMail. But such pages, and such highly interactive web applications, are fewer and further between than most pages that provide value by showing just static text and static images.
In other words, the criticism is fair but the solution of attempting to freeze time or even try to go back is not right. Sometimes though, when things get very bad going back to the basics and re-do everything can work.
"Who knows whether a new version will be available and usable when the current one stops working?"
With SaaS products the company can go out of business; they can change the product on you without your opt-in, making it unusable (or less usable) for your purposes and there is no way to downgrade to the previous version; they can stop supporting your web browser; your account can get disabled or compromised; new policies and regulations on data retention and privacy could render a particular SaaS product unusable for your purposes.
What are you meant to do if a SaaS tool you depend on suddenly stops working? How do you install the old version and get back to work?
But for browsers there is an obvious need for apps that are not “vb in an empty vba-enabled document”. This ugly heap is only stable because an enormous effort and skill goes into making it so.
Most people on HackerNews remember when they were the target demographic for most software. And they no longer are.
If you're under 40, this is how we all started. The target demographic since the explosion of the internet is no longer software engineers. That feels bad for people, and they lash out conservatively.
Because they're not wrong - the software IS worse. For them (us).
For things like security patches, pushing updates has been a net positive IMO.
For absolutely everything else, it's a disaster. I always used to think that the "free software purists" were a bit too radical for my tastes ... but now, in the era of SaaS, I find myself agreeing with them. I want to own and be in control of my hardware and software. Let me decide if upgrading is worth it.
When a program needs 3 build systems to build (ninja, meson, make) is probably a manifestation of exuberation.