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Does newer tech just kinda suck?
I'm the millennial version of a tech illiterate, I have very basic coding skills in Java and that's it, but I've noticed that everything just gets worse as time goes on, and I want a second opinion:
- old webpages (like from the 2000s) are fast and snappy
- new webpages take much longer to load
- new smartphones get bricked easily. I've had 2 new phones get bricked, both my blackberry and my LG smartphone from 2005-2012 still work.
- discord is way less responsive than skype or AIM or IRC.
Everything new just seems more laggy and more prone to random catastrophic failure.
When I was young I actually didn't know what the BSOD was because I literally never experienced it. My first BSOD was in 2017 on Windows 8, even though I've been computing since 1998
The golden age for "normie" consumer computing definitely feels like it took place in the 2000s, and ended somewhere around 2014
Without giving anything specific away, I am a software developer and a consultant, and mostly work on web stuff.
I'll try to keep this short, but in general, yes. Basically, computers keep getting faster, which allows software developers to use higher-level libraries, which are actually less efficient, and thus your average piece of software actually takes more processing power and RAM than back in the day.
As well, because of those high-level libraries, programming is a lot easier than it used to be. Unfortunately, that means that we just hire cheaper developers that aren't as skilled, and they have a harder time tracking down and fixing bugs. Which is doubly worse because those higher-level libraries are black boxes, and you can't always fix things that arise inside of them easily.
But software development companies have basically figured out that shitty software doesn't really hurt their bottom line in the end. For the most part, people will use it if it's a name brand piece of software, like Google or Apple or Microsoft. They don't need to build high quality software because it's basically going to be used by default. The money will come in if you corner a market or if you build something unique, or contract with another business. It doesn't actually have to be high quality.
As well, websites make more money the more ads you put on them. So it doesn't matter how efficient you build it, it's going to be slow. And it doesn't matter how slow it is, because you're going to make more money the more ads and tracking you have. All you need is good search engine optimization and you will get traffic by default. SEO Is easier said than done, but the point is nobody really focuses on performance when it's more profitable to focus on search engines.
As well, because of those high-level libraries, programming is a lot easier than it used to be. Unfortunately, that means that we just hire cheaper developers that aren’t as skilled, and they have a harder time tracking down and fixing bugs. Which is doubly worse because those higher-level libraries are black boxes, and you can’t always fix things that arise inside of them easily.
The Luke Smith/ Mental Outlaw type chuds call these developers "soydevs".
Yeah, I'm not one to use insulting terms, it's more of a natural process of an industry lowering the bar to entry.
But there really is something to be said for those old applications that were built rock solid, even if they only came out with a new version once every four years.
More frequent releases of a smaller feature set isn't wrong. I'd be happy getting high quality application updates every month or so.
But as with all things, the analysis falls on the side that capitalism just doesn't incentivize the right things. Quarterly profit drives lots of features delivered poorly instead of a few good features delivered occasionally. Of course the developers get blamed for this when really they are just a product of a broken system. We invent insulting terms for them instead of going after the real problem, Because, of course, we don't have an understanding of materialism in the west.
Oh well.
The value of the labor of a developer that is good at their job is more costly when you look at a spreadsheet on a quarterly basis. That is the reason that they would rather hire developers that know less. That is the kind of thinking that the board of directors understand about running a corporation. The longer term concequences of having to maintain bad code are disregarded.
Basically, computers keep getting faster, which allows software developers to use higher-level libraries, which are actually less efficient,
Could you elaborate on this?
So this means that an app that does basically the same thing today as in 2005 is going to be way more resource-intensive because of this right?
Yeah, this was a quick and dirty thought, but effectively that's exactly what I mean. An application built from scratch today using modern high-level programming libraries will take more RAM and more CPU to do the same thing than an app written in 2005 does, generally speaking.
Of course, for those people who still write C, C++, or choose to write Rust or Go, or some of the other low-level languages, or even Java, but without major frameworks, can still achieve the type of performance an app written in 2005 could. But for people coming out of college and/or code schools nowadays, you just reach for a big fat framework like spring or use a high level language like JavaScript or Python or Ruby with big frameworks, and your application will by default use more resources.
Though the application might still be fast enough, I'm not even saying that an application written in Python will be slow, but I will say that an application written in Python will by default use about 10x more CPU in RAM than a similar application written in Rust. I mean, maybe the application only uses 10 megabytes of RAM. When the equivalent efficient application would use 1 megabyte of RAM, both of those are very efficient and very fast and would be just fine. But when the difference is between 10 gigabytes of RAM and 1 gigabyte of RAM, yeah, at that point in time, you're pretty much just taking advantage of RAM being cheap.
And it's not even necessarily a bad thing that we do this. There's just a balance to be had. It's okay to write in higher level language if it means you can get some stuff done faster. But major applications nowadays choose to ship an entire browser to be the base layer of their Application. Just because it's more convenient to write cross-platform code that way. That's too much and there's already a lot of work going towards fixing this problem as well. We're just sort of seeing the worst of it right now.
I'm not a computer person but my understanding is that this it's what bricked my MacBook a long time ago. It worked perfectly fine. Not the fastest at seven years old but it was fine. Then along came a Google Chrome update with uncapped the RAM usage. Suddenly 8gb ram wasn't enough to do anything. Nothing else worked if the browser was open and I needed to multitask. Chrome was the only browser compatible with work software. Had to get another machine about a week later (not a Mac, that time).
Which is doubly worse because those higher-level libraries are black boxes, and you can’t always fix things that arise inside of them easily.
If by "higher level" you mean something like Java libraries, I'd say the opposite is true - at least if you don't have the source for a Java class it is trivial to decompile and have something immediately readable. Can't say the same for something like a dll originally written in C++.
More high level in that, think really deeply embedded JavaScript frameworks. In this situation, even Java is comparatively low level. Although a lot of people just rely on spring and spring boot, and don't understand how it works.
I'm the millennial version of a tech illiterate, I have very basic coding skills in Java and that's it
Being able to code at all already places you in the 90th percentile for tech literacy. Many people don't even know what a file is.
When I was young I actually didn't know what the BSOD was because I literally never experienced it. My first BSOD was in 2017 on Windows 8, even though I've been computing since 1998
You've never gotten a BSOD on old versions of Windows?? My personal experience is that old versions of Windows (XP, 7) were much more unstable than new versions of Windows (10, 11).
The golden age for "normie" consumer computing definitely feels like it took place in the 2000s, and ended somewhere around 2014
Why would the golden age of "normie" consumer computing have taken place in the 2000s, when there were pop-up ads that gave you malware and adware toolbars?
The 25th percentile user today has literally never interacted with a hierarchical filesystem. They do not even know what a file is. The Apple mobile ecosystem is so locked down that it's actually impossible to accidentally install malware. I say that now is the golden age of "normie" consumer computing, because tech has never been easier.
I say that for normies, tech has never been better.
Also, the Linux desktop has never been better.
We have reached the point where you can pick any laptop off the shelf and have it work out of the box with Linux. This used to not be possible!
Linux gaming has never been better, now that we have Proton. Games that used to be Windows exclusives now run perfectly on Linux. Linux is now fully viable for video gamers.
GUI tools are now so good that you can use Linux without ever touching the command line.
While Windows may have become worse, Linux has never been better.
Also, laptops used to not last 14 hours on a single charge. Tech is better now.
The tech illiterate probably aren't going to be picking up linux, to be fair
No, definitely not. But Linux has progressed so far that it's now accessible to people who are terminal-shy.
You've never gotten a BSOD on old versions of Windows?? My personal experience is that old versions of Windows (XP, 7) were much more unstable than new versions of Windows (10, 11).
Correct. I never had BSOD and I used XP for thousands of hours in the early 2000s. Mostly runescape, halo trial, neopets, dozens of various flash game sites, etc.
I actually saw my friend have it a couple times and I remember thinking how exotic the solid blue screen lookedWhy would the golden age of "normie" consumer computing have taken place in the 2000s, when there were pop-up ads that gave you malware and adware toolbars?
uhhh because you can x them out? I never got malware or adware toolbars installed on my stuff it felt like "it just werkz" back then, and now it doesn't anymore. I don't even do anything more complex now, it's just internet surfing and some steam games. And discord. Discord also feels extremely laggy, like when you click on something it takes a full split second to switch chatrooms
The 25th percentile user today has literally never interacted with a hierarchical filesystem.
This is only true for zoomers and boomers right?
Regardless of the windows stuff it extends to phones too. Smart-ish phones from before 2012 never gave me problems, while today's smartphones brick often and even while working, sometimes feel randomly laggy in a way the old phones never did. I have no idea what's going on but it feels like the software is just so built up and strung out that it's like a house of cards impromptu stuck together with superglue
- old webpages (like from the 2000s) are fast and snappy
- new webpages take much longer to load
Modern webpages are less like a page and more like a full blown application. If you're not careful you'll get an unoptimized mess, which is exacerbated when you put a bunch of ads on top.
That being said I don't have memories of everything being snappy 20 years ago - there were messy scripts and gigantic images that made Geocities and Angelfire sites near unusable back then as well.
That being said I don't have memories of everything being snappy 20 years ago - there were messy scripts and gigantic images that made Geocities and Angelfire sites near unusable back then as well.
Pages with dozens of embedded JPEG files that are larger than your monitor's resolution and are compressed at highest quality. Easily a quarter to half of a megabyte each and take several minutes to load on dialup, then the webserver times out the connection because you're taking too long to download all these giant files at once.
I don't miss those days. Not to say things are better now, but they necessarily weren't back then either.
Oh, and RealPlayer. Fuck RealPlayer.
Pages with dozens of embedded JPEG files that are larger than your monitor's resolution and are compressed at highest quality. Easily a quarter to half of a megabyte each and take several minutes to load on dialup
Sure but wasn't there a sweet spot in the late 2000s where this wasn't much of an issue
Also that's basically the thing that's happening with discord now too. Thousands of embedded JPGs, GIFs, WEBMs instead of just displaying the link that you click on to view it. The end result is a laggy piece of software
realplayer
Only used it a few times, what was so bad about it? Also what are your thoughts on Quicktime?
Not GP, but: Realplayer compressed everything to hell, the quality was absolutely atrocious. I believe it was buggy as well.
Quicktime was a behemoth that took ages to launch. To speed things up, it liked to auto-load and be active in the system tray, slowing system start down even further and taking up precious ram on the off chance that you might want to watch a quicktime video. It also liked to register itself as the video player of choice for other formats, because why would you use a decent player if you can use a shitty one that was made by Apple? Fuck quicktime.
That being said I don't have memories of everything being snappy 20 years ago - there were messy scripts and gigantic images that made Geocities and Angelfire sites near unusable back then as well.
I guess I wasn't really accessing Angelfire stuff until the late 2000s
Tech doesnt suck, its the software quality that sucks.
yea that's basically what I meant but I don't know enough to blame it all on software
for all I know the transistors might be gettin too small and these 7 nanometer thingies are buggin up the program more than the older 15 nm ones, or something idk
old webpages (like from the 2000s) are fast and snappy. new webpages take much longer to load.
This part is true, especially on phones, but those old webpages were not fast at all when they were first published.
I remember trying to watch videos on dialup Internet. I'd make it start buffering and then go do something else for half an hour before coming back to watch the video. I also remember avoiding certain websites even on DSL because they had 1 or 2 whole megabytes of JavaScript and it took forever to load.
Increases in bandwidth and processing power has made those old websites seem a lot more performant than they were at the time.
Today we can put a lot more stuff on our websites than we used to, which makes things slower, but we're also much more aware of major performance issues. Google uses it as a factor in their ranking algorithm, and offers a pretty intelligent tool to help developers figure out where to optimize their websites, so it's essential for most companies to optimize for that. Giant companies like Amazon and Facebook can ignore it because they'll always be on top, but the rest of us are getting really excited about new frameworks like solid and qwik that will make it a lot easier to optimize our sites.