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Comment by adamddev1 | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if the vibe-coders get their way and we see this level of bloat and bugginess at EVERY level of the software stack. Everything would collapse.

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Before Windows XP, desktop Windows users were accustomed to frequent system crashes. Viruses in the 1990s would take out offices around the world. Nothing collapsed, and nobody switched to Linux. Everyone was just used to it. I think most people will accept the tradeoffs, because it used to be much worse than it is now.

> desktop Windows users were accustomed to frequent system crashes

Home users maybe. I've started with Windows NT 4.0 and don't remember it being crash-prone.

That’s why people used NT - it didn’t crash as often.

NT was not for home users. And it's USP was that it was way more stable. Then Win 2000 (NT variant) came and at XP they finally merged.

I meant also in terms of space and time complexity with the slower, bloatier software at every level, things would also freeze and fill up.

What people can get away with on the upper crust with end-user apps would spell disaster for the inner parts.

Eh, that was said about Javascript, electron, node, etc

The world adapted, that is to say if something is popular- they will keep it going through just enough fixes to keep it going

They've had their way since before AI was a thing and it was fine and it still is. You can spend the tokens you have on optimizing the performance of your fork of whatever software you're running. For large categories of software it's mattering less and less what other people choose to prioritize because you can choose your own priorities when you roll your own version

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