Is Software Getting Worse?

With physical goods, manufacturers seek the lowest possible production cost. Use exactly as thick material as needed, but no thicker. The cheapest material that does the job (as opposed to material that is eg. 2x as expensive but lasts 5x as long), etc. Hoping to sell more product than competitors.

With software that doesn't make sense. No wait, it does! Here the focus is on time-to-market.

New trend comes along (like AI now), be the 1st to incorporate it in product & kick out the door. QC be damned, products can be patched in field - or so that seems to be the idea.

Author: "Why does this happen? I don't know, but my own bias suggests that it's because there's less focus on regression testing".

Adding features is easier than making sure ALL included features (old & new) actually work. Or keep working.

I sometimes enjoy taking apart cheap products to see what corners were cut. PCB traces in place of a fuse, replacing bridge rectifier (4 diodes) with 1 diode + (sometimes) a bigger capacitor, things like that. Designers are creative. :-)

This is called Muntzing: take something out, and if it still works, you have improved the item.

With software, this is an art that developers should pursue. But the thing is: in software land, NOBODY does that. Well apart from snipping code in performance bottlenecks, that is.

> What seems new to me is that software that used to be good deteriorates

I think you can say the same about any industry, not only software. There are countless products that "aren't made how they used to".