'It Just Seems That Nobody is Interested in Building Quality, Fast, Efficient, Lasting, Foundational Stuff Anymore' (tonsky.me)

Nikita Prokopov, a software programmer and author of Fira Code, a popular programming font, AnyBar, a universal status indicator, and some open-source Clojure libraries, writes: Remember times when an OS, apps and all your data fit on a floppy? Your desktop todo app is probably written in Electron and thus has userland driver for Xbox 360 controller in it, can render 3d graphics and play audio and take photos with your web camera. A simple text chat is notorious for its load speed and memory consumption. Yes, you really have to count Slack in as a resource-heavy application. I mean, chatroom and barebones text editor, those are supposed to be two of the less demanding apps in the whole world. Welcome to 2018.

At least it works, you might say. Well, bigger doesn't imply better. Bigger means someone has lost control. Bigger means we don't know what's going on. Bigger means complexity tax, performance tax, reliability tax. This is not the norm and should not become the norm. Overweight apps should mean a red flag. They should mean run away scared. 16Gb Android phone was perfectly fine 3 years ago. Today with Android 8.1 it's barely usable because each app has become at least twice as big for no apparent reason. There are no additional functions. They are not faster or more optimized. They don't look different. They just...grow?

iPhone 4s was released with iOS 5, but can barely run iOS 9. And it's not because iOS 9 is that much superior -- it's basically the same. But their new hardware is faster, so they made software slower. Don't worry -- you got exciting new capabilities like...running the same apps with the same speed! I dunno. [...] Nobody understands anything at this point. Neither they want to. We just throw barely baked shit out there, hope for the best and call it "startup wisdom." Web pages ask you to refresh if anything goes wrong. Who has time to figure out what happened? Any web app produces a constant stream of "random" JS errors in the wild, even on compatible browsers.

[...] It just seems that nobody is interested in building quality, fast, efficient, lasting, foundational stuff anymore. Even when efficient solutions have been known for ages, we still struggle with the same problems: package management, build systems, compilers, language design, IDEs. Build systems are inherently unreliable and periodically require full clean, even though all info for invalidation is there. Nothing stops us from making build process reliable, predictable and 100% reproducible. Just nobody thinks it's important. NPM has stayed in "sometimes works" state for years.

Comments

Re:At least as of 2018 that's 78%

[lgw]

Living paycheck to paycheck is usually the result of lack of judgement, ability to plan, or ability to defer gratification. Many people, myself included, eventually grow out of childish spending habits and then magically aren't living paycheck to paycheck any more.

One thing that's important to realize is that the notion that people are "living beyond their means" is generally a false narrative

If you have debt, you are living beyond your means. True story. You'll have to lower your standard of living for a while, of course, if you live within your means. Amazing how savings and then investments add up over the decades though, if you can plan and defer gratification.

For me, I'm going to pay approximately 50% of my income between taxes and healthcare this year and my roads are falling apart

Massive taxes and none of it spent on anything useful? Yeah, I used to live in Cali too. Fortunately, I learned to make plans and defer gratification, and I live in Texas now. No state or local income taxes, and great roads.

Basically, there's a fall scale class war going on that only one side is fighting...

Man, actual Marxist screed. Very 20th century. Can't you at least make an effort to tie it to identity politics and intersectionality? Surely women and minorities are hardest hit?