Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

I read half way through, enough to get the sense. What the guy is missing is the difference between “it bothers me” and it matters.

He uses a car analogy (how much efficiency we squeezed out of cars vs software) but misses the point - if a car was available that consumed half the gas or went twice as fast, I’d buy it!

If a computer / OS was available to me that was so much faster / more efficient than what I use… turns out I don’t really care and neither does anyone.

I am writing this on a 6 year old iPhone X that I got after my wife upgraded to the iPhone 15 at the same time my toddler drowned my Pixel 6 pro. The iPhone X is noticeably laggier than the 15 or the pixel but it doesn’t matter enough to go upgrade. And ditto for my 10+ year old PC. Point being, if I as a consumer am not bothered by the perf I get to even just drive down to the store, manufacturers would be dumb to over index on it

Obvious this is “just me” but if people really cared about a phone that boots in a second instead of 30(his example) there would be a market for it but the fact is nobody reboots their phone and it doesn’t matter. On the other hand if I had to wait 30 sec to drive my car and another manufacturer reduced that to 1, I’d switch.

TLDR - yes it’s inefficient and no it doesn’t matter. Those old systems he’s talking about were “efficient” because they had to run on hardware of the day, and increased requirements meant decreased market size - ie it really mattered! I am sure someone bemoaned the bloat of win95 that couldn’t run on his beloved 286.

I believe what the author is bemoaning is not the business or customer realities, but the "art of engineering" being traded in for the bottom line. In many ways, this is simply the way all disenchantment works, the hard truth is that art doesn't really matter for its own sake. It needs to sell, and what makes it sell is not what makes one love the process of building. The elegance, the simple beauty, none of those "matter" to the market. Unfortunately, writing up articles stating how much you can't do what you love probably won't garner much sympathy (clearly), but I suppose that's why we have passion projects instead.

One of the key differences between art and engineering is that the former eschews compromise while the later requires it. An engineer that over-indexes on a single dimension of what they are working on is seldom a good engineer.

Efficiency is one dimension. If I couldn't run calculator on anything but the latest Pixel / iPhone, that would be clearly insane. But it's not the sole dimension - if my ambition is to create something that works well for millions or billions users, hand-crafting Assembly may not be the right tradeoff.

People care but they have other concerns like compatibility that force them to surrender to bad software.

Look how bad the self checkout experience is. You might say “if people cared, they would shop elsewhere”. But people want to buy food more than boycott a store with bad software.

// Look how bad the self checkout experience is. You might say “if people cared, they would shop elsewhere”.

I would say that bad checkout matters - in the way that I am talking about mattering - because it does effect a non-trivial amount of behavior.

First, I am much more likely to opt for self-checkout at Whole Foods vs in my town's supermarket (that I otherwise like) because the WF experience is pretty smooth while at the other store, the machine blocks until help arrives every X items. Does that matter? Well I think so, because (1) some # of people will go to WF over this store just because of that (2) some # of people will stand in a cashier line - costing the store money - because of this (3) some people will opt for delivery because of this - undermining the "local store" value proposition in the long run.

The above impact exists because in the bad case, self-checkout is nearly unusable. If it was just a matter of every item scan taking 2 seconds instead of 1, or needing to get human help once a year instead of several time per checkout - nobody would care.

Until a critical mass of movers forms, no change will be made. And there's other inertia, including lack of signal from customers, existing practices, vendor monopolies.

Your reasoning assumes a fluid system with perfect observability into everyone's interests. Consumers can't even articulate their own interests fully -- it's impossible for vendors to respond properly.

Quality and high performing software exists when vendors elect to produce it. There are intrinsic motives and extrinsic.

Most quality products exist despite consumer demands not because of them. Don't fall for the "money incentivises everything" trap.

// Quality and high performing software exists when vendors elect to produce it.

Can you give me an example of where this exists separately from "and we can sell more units before its performant"? I am open to that being the case, but wasn't able to think of a good example. Can you?

He lost me immediately with the car analogy, as if the auto industry, its products, and the ways they're used by consumers are in any way reasonable.

Everyone needs a car capable of reaching 120mph right? Moms and dads need giant utility vehicles to feel safe on the streets surrounded by giant pickup trucks. How is it "efficient" to drive trucks that are 2-3x the curb weight with less cargo capacity?

The problems occur due to business decisions not engineering

> I read half way through, enough to get the sense. What the guy is missing is the difference between “it bothers me” and it matters.

It bothers me often means "it matters to me."

Sometimes it is a signal of something bigger. Other times... it's just me. And it is hard to know the difference.

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