Unfortunately, we've reached the point where a generation of new adults take janky technology as normal, both as consumers and producers.
Their entire life was in an environment where nothing was stable or cohesive or efficient and everything was either "free" or rented. They don't recognize what they're missing or why it might matter.
So as consumers they don't know to care when you build better stuff, and as producers they don't even know what it means to build better stuff. And soon these people will graduate into leadership and management with the same understanding of the world.
Surely, there's plenty of opportunity for the rest of us to keep quietly rescuing these janky projects from disaster, shoring them up as their sloppy compromises overtake them, but unfortunately it's very possible that it'll be a long while still before a strong and viable demand for "better stuff" returns.
> Surely, there's plenty of opportunity for the rest of us to keep quietly rescuing these janky projects
Once our generation (the rest of us) is in the ground, there will be nobody alive that even remembers that software can be made with high quality. Nobody who's ever seen really fast performing software, software that didn't crash unexpectedly, software that didn't eat your battery and storage space, software that wasn't exploitable by a 14 year old in their basement, software that didn't leak personal information all over the world. No developers who have counted CPU cycles or took the time and effort to keep a for loop in a single page of memory. Neither developers nor consumers will even believe that software can be great.
>Once our generation (the rest of us) is in the ground, there will be nobody alive that even remembers that software can be made with high quality.
Please tell me, when was this mythical era? Most software has sucked and been balls forever. Windows, why is my screen blue? MacOS, why do I have a bomb icon? Linux/Unix, why don't I have desktop apps and why doesn't my sound card work?
Almost all corporate/sold software is laden with too many untested features, and always has been. Fast purpose built software is uncommon as your average user wants features.
Their entire life was in an environment where nothing was stable or cohesive or efficient and everything was either "free" or rented. They don't recognize what they're missing or why it might matter.
So as consumers they don't know to care when you build better stuff, and as producers they don't even know what it means to build better stuff. And soon these people will graduate into leadership and management with the same understanding of the world.
Surely, there's plenty of opportunity for the rest of us to keep quietly rescuing these janky projects from disaster, shoring them up as their sloppy compromises overtake them, but unfortunately it's very possible that it'll be a long while still before a strong and viable demand for "better stuff" returns.