alt Hacker NewsNow that generative AI products are becoming more widely used, it's a little depressing how folks don't seem to view the world with a broad historical context.
The "AI effect" on the world has many similarities to previous events and in many ways changes very little about how the world works.
> I'm terrified of the good enough to ship—and I'm terrified of nobody else caring.
For almost every product/service ever offered, it was possible to scale the "quality" of the offering while largely keeping the function or outcome static. In fact, lots of capitalistic activity is basically a search for the cheapest and fastest way to accomplish a minimum set of requirements. This leads to folks (including me!!) to lament the quality of certain products/services.
For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long.
Software is the same way. Most users just absolutely do not know about, care about, or worry about security, privacy, maintainability, robustness, or a host of other things. For some reason this is continually terrifying and shocking to many.
There is nothing surprising here, it's been this way for many years and will continue.
Obviously there are exceptions, but for the most part it's best to assume the above.
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I feel like there's a false dichotomy here where there's an inverse relationship between quality and cost. I know seen plenty of cheap goods that do what they're supposed to and last forever, and I know plenty of expensive projects, both in purchasing price and development cost that are just steaming piles. So you get all this sloppy jank and say "well but at least it's fast and cheap". I'm not sure that's the argument you should be making, why can't we have high quality cheap things in the first place?
It should also be noted that most companies that make high quality (last decades) low volume goods go out of business; people vote with their dollars and dont want the capex.
Put another way, who here wants a car that costs more than their house? Or shoes that cost 2000$?
> lots of capitalistic activity is basically a search for the cheapest and fastest way to accomplish a minimum set of requirements
This is what produced our high standard of living.
For example, Ford and the Model T. Before the Model T, only the rich could afford to buy a car. Ford was relentless with the T in finding ways to cut the manufacturing cost. And the result was America got wheels.
Historically, every major general-purpose technology followed the same trajectory. Printing reduced the quality of manuscripts while massively increasing access. Industrialization replaced craftsmanship with standardization. Early automobiles were unreliable and dangerous compared to horse-drawn transport, yet they won because they were sufficient and scalable. The internet degraded editorial standards while enabling unprecedented distribution. None of these shifts reversed. They stabilized at a new equilibrium where high quality persisted only in niches where it was economically justified.
> Most users just absolutely do not know about, care about, or worry about security, privacy, maintainability, robustness, or a host of other things.
That is a problem that needs to be fixed in those users, not something we should take advantage of as an excuse for releasing shoddy work.
> For some reason this is continually terrifying and shocking to many.
For many reasons.
It means that a good product can be outcompeted by a substandard one because it releases faster, despite the fact it will cause problems later, so good products are going to become much more rare at the same time as slop becoming much more abundant.
It means that those of us trying to produce good output will be squeezed more and more to the point where we can't do that without burning out.
It means that we can trust any given product or service even less than we were able to in the past.
It means that because we are all on the same network, any flaw could potentially affect us all not just the people who don't care.
The people who don't care when caring means things release with lower cadence, are often the same people who will cry loudest and longest about how much everyone else should have cared when a serious bug bites their face off.
and so on… … …
Are you suggesting we should just sit back and let then entire software industry go the way of AAA games or worse?
All true, except I think you've conflated software and software product a bit. The author is mourning the craft, the same way the boot makers or furniture makers probably mourned the decline of their craft. We'll still have boots, furniture, and software, but those craftspeople who take pride in it can justifiably feel melancholy about it all.
> For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long.
Sure, but the OP's concern is whether this chokes off innovation. Is there some better kind of hiking boot, longer-lasting and cheaper and maybe more comfortable, that we've never found because the shoemakers who'd be able to invent it are too busy optimizing Nike production lines?
> For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long.
That's rewriting history especially in terms of software and hardware.
Appliances like Microwaves, etc were revolutionary for its time. Only problem: they lasted forever (>20 years). No 1 needed to buy it again = no business. It was deliberately not made to last as long and possibly not exactly cheaper both in cost and retail price.
> Software is the same way. Most users just absolutely do not know about, care about, or worry about security, privacy, maintainability, robustness, or a host of other things.
They don't want to know. They assume it is there. Most people have inherit trust with for example big companies.
> In fact, lots of capitalistic activity is basically a search for the cheapest and fastest way to accomplish a minimum set of requirements.
This is a rewrite of history to. In search? No. More like self create. Was Uber for example searching for the cheapest way? Well, yes, by throwing so much money to have a monopoly. We're currently throwing trillions at AI to find the "cheapest" way. Just like with the dot com era, we might not even recover 1% wasted. Are you sure it is the cheapest?
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> Most users just absolutely do not know about, care about, or worry about security, privacy, maintainability, robustness, or a host of other things.
nitpick: most users don’t care about these things until something goes significantly wrong and it impacts them, e.g. a massive data breach or persistent global downtime.
then they get angry. very angry.
just because people don’t care about it now doesn’t mean they won’t care about it in the future.
edit — these are the hidden requirements.
> For example, it's possible to make hiking boots that last a lot longer than others. But if the requirement is to have it last for just 20 miles, it's better to pay less for one that won't last as long.
until requirements change, or the hidden requirements come out to play … most software engineers can probably recall multiple times when the requirements changed half way through. hell, i’ve done it on solo projects.
now we’re stuck with boots that can only last 20 miles, but we need to go 35.