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Comment by creata | Hacker News Reader

Serious question from a consumer of software: if software can be improved so effortlessly now, why isn't it getting better?

Like, why is it all still so buggy? Why does no website seem to consider 96 PPI displays in its design? Why don't we have ostensibly useful features like undo trees everywhere? Why is everything still a RAM hog? Why does the proportion of websites that pay no heed to accessibility seem to be going up rather than down?

I'm told we're living in the future, but it sure doesn't feel like it.

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For the same reason that increasing headcount never really solved the bug problem.

Flawless software isn't the goal, ever. Feature development is almost always the primary goal, and fixing bugs and performance issues is only done if the bug is bad enough.

I don't think you're wrong overall, and it jives with tripleee's reply, but I don't think wanting end-user software to be less buggy than it currently is is asking for "flawless" software.

You're right, I was being hyperbolic. Bugginess in software is a spectrum, and asking why we're not further along that spectrum toward being bug free, is really what the OP is asking. My answer still applies.

Because those don't increase business revenue. People aren't making their buying decisions off that

>I'm told we're living in the future, but it sure doesn't feel like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzm6pvHPSGo

It is interesting.

I live in the future when it comes to my hobby of music making. I make my own little software tools that I did not have the ability to make 2 years ago. Little tools that are too specialized and specific for my obscure taste to have much wider economic value as tools in themselves.

Claude is also the greatest obscure book recommendation engine I have ever found so I have a lot more interesting books to read than in the past.

Outside of this, I basically live in 2019 but everything is more expensive.

I worry this is the future. It doesn't really feel much different other than things getting more and more expensive.

> why isn't it getting better?

Lack of information. When you are on the building side you become blind to its faults. Consumers almost never tell you what isn't good about it.

> why is it all still so buggy?

Also lack of information. I haven't seen any bugs in years in the things I've worked on. LLMs have closed every last obvious testing gap, squashing any outstanding bugs there. That's not to say it is all bug-free now, but what bugs users may be experiencing aren't being reported.

AI is good at building software, but it is still not good at consuming software like actual consumers do.

Because the goal isn't to make the future better for humanity. It's to make the future more addictive for humanity. Big difference. More clicks, more ad views, more engagement, not necessarily more pleasant. I mean, that's obvious.

AI doesn't really make the process better or more reliable, it just speeds it up.

Like the old quip that a cup of coffee lets you do stupid things faster.

Most software that isn't trivial is a big ball of mud. AI is trained on that and produces the same (or worse) - faster.

Because it hasn't been that long since the November singularity.

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