Why We Can’t Have Nice Software
https://andrewkelley.me/post/why-we-cant-have-nice-software.html
From Andrew R. Kelley, he’s the author of the Zig language
Is the reason capitalism? I bet it’s capitalism
Edit: it’s capitalism
You’re cheating. The answer is always capitalism.
Not always! Sometimes it’s eg. cognitive biases
Hey, a lot of open source software is really warty too. But you could probably also blame that on capitalism if you tried hard enough :)
… did we read the same blog post? Did it mention OSS once?
Peak dishwasher is a great concept and I think it highlights something important in the way we think of technology. There’s often this underlying assumption of technological progress, but if we look at a particular area (e.g. dishwashers) we can see that after a burst of initial innovation the progress has basically halted. Many things are like this and I would in fact wager that a large portion of technologies that we use haven’t actually meaningfully developed since the 80s. Computers are obviously a massive exception to this - and there are several more - but I think that we tend to overstate the inevitability of technological progress. One day we might even exhaust the well of smaller and faster computers each year and I wonder how we will continue to view technological progress after that.
There is a lot of fake progress. In computer technology some things were refined, but the only true technological novelty these last 20 years was the containerization. And maybe AI. Internet was the previous jump, but it’s not really a computer technology, and it affect much, much more than that.
And Moor law has already ended some years ago.
Clock speed and other areas I’d agree have stagnated, but graphics cards, wireless communicaiton standards, cheap fast SSD’s, and power efficient CPU’s have massively impacted end-user performance in the last 10 years. RISC-V is also a major development that is just getting started.
None of those are major breakthrough. They’re more computing power. It’s still the same technology.
Today llm are the prime candidate for a breakthrough. They still have to prove themselves though, to prove that they’re not just a fancy expensive useless toy like the blockchain.
Risc-v is not meant to be a breakthrough. It’s an evolution.
Internet was a breakthrough. The invention of the mouse was a breakthrough.
Increase in power or in disk space, new languages or os, none of those are breakthroughs. None of those changed how computer programs were made or used.
The smartphone is a significant thing. Wi-Fi is not really important though, because you don’t do anything more with WiFi than you can do with ethernet. The smartphone though and its network, that is a big thing.
Sure not a breakthrough, but they are “real” progress not fake progress (which is what I was responding to in your earlier comment)
I disagree slightly, but only with his level of cynicism. I agree, we see the “peak diskwasher” problem everywhere. And I agree with his conclusion. But I feel he glossed over that, well, people still need dishwashers. Growth might be impossible, but a steady and “boring” amount of profit should still be possible selling plain-ole-dishwashers. Yet … for some reason, we don’t see that.
Instead companies throw everything into growth and we get the retarded bluetooth enabled dishwasher problem everywhere, and I’d like to know more about why.
Growth might be impossible, but a steady and “boring” amount of profit should still be possible selling plain-ole-dishwashers. Yet … for some reason, we don’t see that.
God yes this bothers and fascinates me.
Instead companies throw everything into growth and we get the retarded bluetooth enabled dishwasher problem everywhere, and I’d like toknow more about why.
I think it’s alluded to in the article:
They found a way to make consumers spend more money on dishwashing. The line goes up, for one more year. But it’s not enough. It has to go up every year.
Digging deeper: why must the line go up? Pesonally I see it as a deeply emotional, human thing.
When you read those annual financial reports from big companies, they will do anything to make sure things look rosy. Bullshit terms like “negative growth” are used because “loss” or “shrink” sound bad. So what if it sounds bad?
Confidence. Trust. It’s emotional. These are deep in our psyche. It’s how governments get elected, contracts are won, and investments are made. It’s what makes us human. If that line goes down… will it go back up? What’s going to happen? Alarm bells! Uncertaintly. Anxiety. People abandon you. Money, power, influence fades. You could find yourself replaced by the up-and-coming who “show promise”.
Our social emotional species has hundreds of thousands of years (millions?) of years of this stuff hardwired into us. Trust let us cooperate beyond our own individual or family interests. Would we be human otherwise? (I found the article Behavioural Modernity interesting).
Digging deeper: why must the line go up? Pesonally I see it as a deeply emotional, human thing.
The idea that corporations, economies or any human ventures in general have to grow infinitely is a very recent invention and obsession. I honestly find it worrying that someone would think it’s some sort of deeply ingrained human trait when it’s clearly not culturally universal (eg. small hunter-gatherer tribes wouldn’t exist otherwise) and not present through all of history. Really goes to show how well the current economic system has been “bought” (har har), and how easily we start thinking that some culturally defined phenomenon or another just has to be a fundamental part of humans. There’s a lot of similar thinking around nation states that are ethnically homogenous and based around a shared national cultural identity – people seem to think that that’s the default and how things have been since ancient times, but nation states are barely even 200 years old as a concept.
The line has to go up because the current economic system demands it has to go up, not some fundamental feature of the human psyche
