Discussion

Good software knows when to stop

benttoothpaste: als: both fitting and terrifying name for that new utility...

NoSalt: We need something similar to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, to protect un-AI'd Linux distributions so that, in the event of an AI apocalypse, we will have access to clean operating systems.

theorchid: Oracle Database has now been renamed Oracle AI Database. But I think that in time, they will rename it back to Oracle Database. The hype will pass, but the AI will remain, and the name will no longer need to include the AI prefix. AI will just become the norm.

ssaboum: not exactly what we're asking of database, don't you think ?

righthand: Needs for actual survival and functionality do not out weigh needs for product manager promotions anymore.

1313ed01: I have a few of those, binary+source, downloaded (and installed in QEMU, lots of fun!):https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/More recent distributions are a bit big to keep though. I like the older ones that fit on a few DVDs, including all packages.But we just need to store the checksums to know if a file has been tempered with. No need to put entire distributions in cold storage.Of course I heard I am not alone and every self-respecting digital hoarder has a large collection of Linux ISOs.

grishka: Definitely that, a finite scope is good and finished software is beautiful.But also, most of the modern software is in what I call "eternal beta". The assumption that your users always have an internet connection creates a perverse incentive structure where "you can always ship an update", and in most cases there's one singular stream of updates so new features (that no one asked for btw) and bug fixes can't be decoupled. In case of web services like YouTube you don't get to choose the version you use at all.

xg15: Good software doesn't get you VC funding.

pocksuppet: The destructive forces (fire clearing deadwood) of the economy have been artificially suppressed for a long time. Most companies are zombie companies now. The US is an entire zombie economic zone.

thewebguyd: That's what happens when you have nearly a decade of ZIRP & QE.Money printer go brrrr.

sammy2255: Link this to the Spotify product developers

grishka: As if VC funding is a good thing.Good software is made by individual people, nonprofits, or privately-owned entities.

jasonlotito: VC funding gets you paid, which is a good thing.Not getting paid is less good.

grishka: VC funding gets you enslaved. There's no such thing as free money.

muppetman: This is why I love Sublime Text. It's so fast, it works so well. It isn't trying to be AI, it isn't trying to evolve until it can read email or issue SSL certs via ACME. It's focused on one thing and it does it extremely, extremely well.

deafpolygon: this is why i am still on vim

HoldOnAMinute: I am still on "vi"

muppetman: Ha yes, learning vim was one of the best things I ever did. I can SSH onto a Juniper router and fix up config using vi. I still try to instill in juniors these days "Learn vim!" but everyone just wants to use nano (which I understand but nano isn't preinstalled on many network devices)

dgxyz: Yeah that. Same here.

PTOB: ... slowly losing all functionality until, suddenly, death.

wenbin: We should normalize "finished" software products that stop feature creep and focus strictly on bug fixes and security updates.It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand.Evernote and Dropbox were perfect in 2012. Adding more features just to chase new user growth often comes at the expense of confusing the existing user base. Not good

allemagne: https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/Of course, any AI smart enough to apocalypse us would also know about these.

rutuhffhbb: > ready to upgrade your favorite Linux distribution and packages to their latest versionsIt is "their" distribution, to do with as they wish. If this would happen to your workstation, you are a fool, for not following release notes.I already jumped distros for several reasons, marketing BS was one of them. I do not need latest scam or flag of the month!

ryandrake: This is one of the biggest issues in software development: So few projects are willing to admit that they are finished. I can probably count on one hand how many software products I use every day that actually get better (or stay the same) on update. The vast majority of them peaked somewhere around v1.0, and are just getting worse every time the developer touches them.

smm11: No, all software grows until it gets email. Jamie told me that.

patcon: Maybe good software is like a living thing?It grows and grows and eventually slows or grows too much and dies (cancer), but kinda sheds its top-heavy structure as its regrown anew from the best parts that survived the balanced cancer of growth?Just forks and forks and restarts. It's not the individual piece of softwares job (or its community's) to manage growing in the larger sense, just to eventually leave and pass on its best parts to the next thing

dpcx: I notice at this time there are no comments about systemd. I figured there would be at least one comment about it and "it does not try to do everything".

ssenssei: I built a spotify music extractor called harmoni that helps you download your playlists and I feel I'm done. It does its job and it caters to both non-technicals and technical people alike.

tambourine_man: Spotify is a moving target, however. It may change its API, remove it completely, etc. I think you can only be truly done if you don’t rely on a third party.

latexr: > I think you can only be truly done if you don’t rely on a third party.On a third-party that changes. Making software for a specific hardware like a game console or a specific e-reader may still technically rely on a third-party but doesn’t carry the same risk and you can definitely say you’re done.

jasonjmcghee: > `als` doesn't just show files.> It predicts which ones you meant.> It ranks them.> It understands you.This is so good I want to know whether someone generated this or wrote it by hand.

paxys: You are basically describing all software ever shipped before webapps and online updates became a thing.Companies wrote software and sold them in boxes. You paid once and it was yours forever. You got exactly what was in the box, no more and no less.The company then shipped a new verson in a different box 1-3 years later. If you liked it enough, and wanted the new features, you bought the new box.

smm11: And AI.

grishka: No. The optimum amount of AI in this world is zero.

Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem instead

john_strinlai: >Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem insteadnot quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game).for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."they eventually caved and launched classic WoW to overwhelming success. some time later, in an interview, ion hazzikostas (the game director) and holly longdale (vice president & executive producer), admitted that they got WoW classic very wrong and that the people "really did know what they want".anyways, point being that sometimes the person putting in the feature request knows exactly what they want and they have a good idea. while your default mode might be (and perhaps should be) to ignore feature requests, it is worth recognizing that you may be doing so at your own loss. after all, you might not not be able to fully understand every underlying problem of every user of your product.

matthewkayin: This is a good point, though maybe means that "understanding the underlying problem" requires a degree of humanity.I think it's fair to say that Blizzard at a certain point went corporate and "lost the plot", so they thought they knew what people wanted, even though they really didn't (don't you guys have phones?).

bheadmaster: Same with Old School RuneScape.Jagex thought they knew better than the players what the game should look like, and overhauled the whole game to the point it was unrecognizable. It took a massive loss of paying members to get them to finally release 2007 version of RuneScape back.Even now, OSRS has double the amount of players that RS3 has. Lol

treetalker: I'm not a WoW player, so perhaps speaking out of turn — but doesn't that example show that users know what extra features they don't want, not extra features they do?

jayd16: I think a large part of that is that Classic Wow is possibly not in the business interests of the bean counters. If it's classic, you can't sell new expansions, new MTX etc. I don't know how honest Ion was about the actual reasons Classic didn't happen sooner.Still, by volume, there are thousands of examples of bad ideas and feature requests on the wow forum too.

devin: This reminds me of Origin Systems and Ultima Online. The number of player-run shards over the years promising Classic UO gameplay and the number of player hours spent on them is enormous.

john_strinlai: >"Still, by volume, there are thousands of examples of bad ideas and feature requests on the wow forum too."for sure!that is why i made sure to include "while your default mode might be (and perhaps should be) to ignore feature requests" in my comment.

thewebguyd: To be fair on the Blizzard example, I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by, doing as your quote said, understanding the underlying problem.It wasn't only a "we want WoW classic bug for bug," it was "the modern game has become so unrecognizable that it's basically WoW 2.0, you ruined it with the modern systems"Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy.Classic will only save them for so long without them making new content, but using classic's systems. So in a way, I think the point still stands, you have to understand what the underlying problem is. Users do generally know what they want, but they don't always know how to ask for it.

jasonlotito: > Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy.100% nope. Classic is what we wanted. All of what you just said is you saying: "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."

GolfPopper: Agreed. Current WoW has done some similar things to what the prior poster suggested, and while I personally find the current game better that it was for a while, it remains a very different experience from Classic.

latexr: I have been in situations where a user makes a feature request and I don’t think it makes sense, but because they’ve been polite and understanding I decide to take the time to explain exactly why it wouldn’t work, but while doing so I basically rubber duck and come up with solutions to the problems I’m describing (which the user hasn’t foreseen yet). Sometimes that ends with me discovering yet even stronger reasons to not implement the feature, but other times it makes me delete the whole reply and work on it instead because I have worked it out. Sometimes doing so ends up taking less time than writing the full reply. Often the feature ends up being even better than what they originally requested.In contrast, if a user has been rude, entitled, and high maintenance, I may end up not even trying to reply in the first place because I know they’ll just be combative every step of the way, and giving them what they want just makes them demand more, seldom being appreciative. These tend to be users who want something a very specific way and refuse to understand why the thing they are asking for is profoundly selfish and would shit the interaction for everyone else to satisfy their own desire. So I don’t do it.This has been a bigger sidetrack than I originally intended. I guess the moral of the story is don’t be a prick to the people you’re asking something from.

sfink: Users usually don't know what they really want. But neither do developers or product managers. The "understand the underlying problem" part is hard, and easy to convince yourself of incorrectly.There are also shallow wants and deeper wants. I don't have the experience to know, but my guess is that classic WoW was more of a shallow want, where people were very happy to get it, but the deeper want was more about a style and feel of gameplay. The players would be happier with new stuff that kept the magic of the classic game, but they justifiably knew they couldn't trust Blizzard not to add anything without messing it up. So the only practical way to satisfy the desire was to just roll back all the way to the classic version.In a perfect world, some designer would come along and incorporate carefully selected bits and pieces of the new version, probably with some novel changes to balance it out, and end up with something superior to both classic and new WoW. But that would be really hard to get right, and distrusting players would fight it (with very good reasons for their suspicion), and you would have a giant mess of different people claiming that they know what to keep and what to discard, except nobody would agree on the same things, etc.

lemagedurage: We shouldn't discount nostalgia. Sometimes an otherwise objectively worse product is better because it reminds people of the past.

InitialBP: Another example is Old School Runescape, who reverted back to an earlier save and has now diverged as an entirely separate game running with older systems as they lost a ton of players with their "Evolution of Combat" update. While nostalgia is definitely a powerful tool, I agree with the previous commenter that the original WoW was a very different game than the modern version and it seems like that is one of the core aspects of what people desired.

lithobraking: On this note, I'm seeing this pattern crop up in retail WoW addons. (It's maybe an even more literal interpenetration of the title.) Many of the newer addons are heavy vibe-coded due to last-minute WoW API changes, like ArcUI.The addons have _so_ many ways to customize displays that their configuration menus look like lovecraftian B2B products with endless lists of fields, sliders, and dropdowns. I hear a lot of complaints from raiders in my guild about how hard it is to put together a decently functional UI. I wonder if these tools are allowing and/or causing devs to more easily feature creep the software that we build.