alt Hacker NewsI think the (lack of) quality of these tools shows that software engineering is maturing as an engineering discipline.
We were overbuilding trivial parts of the software like the Romans overbuilt small bridges.
Modern engineering is about making the thing that barely works. If you disagree, learn a little bit about bit narrow the tolerances of modern cars and bridges are.
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I think there's a difference between something that's engineered and precise vs something that's rickety. Just because you built something that might fall apart at any moment doesn't mean it's been engineered with narrow tolerances.
I don't disagree but it's clearly a problem that already existed for decades in software and is just being 10x'ed. how many different frontend frameworks or AWS regurgitated and enshittified cloud services did we have to endure over the years.
> learn a little bit about bit narrow the tolerances of modern cars and bridges are
Buildings typically use a safety factor of 1.5 to 2.0, and cars typically use a safety factor of 2.0 to 3.0. These things are being built twice as strong as they need to be. I wouldn't call that narrow.
And with software, we're at a point where it can't even properly do what it needs to. If we were overbuilding it, damn software wouldn't crash so much.