Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    9·
    24 hours ago

    Those who believe we’ve been in an incrementally escalating software crisis since at least 2007.

    Web development is now especially notorious for completely disregarding accessibility, user device capabilities, and regulations. Most of the ideas of user-centred design are alien to modern developers.

    goes to archive.org’s copy of Yahoo from the golden era of 2006

    https://web.archive.org/web/20061212011659/http://www.yahoo.com/

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    • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
      1·
      18 hours ago

      Full context of the first quote:

      Those who believe we’ve been in an incrementally escalating software crisis since at least 2007.

      Our current software crisis – we’ve had a few – has been ramping up since the US gave up on regulation after the 2007 crash. Instead of reforming and regulating finance, the US decided to let the finance industry take over all of its industries, which hasn’t been great overall, but for software it’s meant that “quality” stopped mattering.

      • Well-funded startups capture market share with subsidised products.
      • Big tech is a cluster of oligopolies and monopolies.
      • Internal software projects are driven by their potential effects on stock prices (“UGC! No, Web 2.0! No, blockchain! No, AI!”).
      • Customer lock-in is a standard tactic.

      There is little to no downside to poor software quality. The upside of doing the job well is limited compared to tactics like lock-in, dishonest subscription models, and monopolies

      If his principal complaint is industry consolidation and consumer abuse, then the browser situation is not a great counterexample.

    • Mirror Giraffe@piefed.socialEnglish
      31·
      23 hours ago

      Tbf an LLM does a lot of things poorly but enforcing accessibility standards to a higher degree that most websites should be easy for it.