I can definitely agree with the "stupidly overcomplex" of current software.
People are not building purpose built components, but just strapping existing things together. Strapping things together almost sounds like a good thing until you realise that the philosophy of plumbing very specific tools together to create a solution to a problem, which is a great way to do things, has been somehow perverted. Popular end solutions are now being plumbed together as if they are specific tools. This carries a tonne of complexity into the most trivial things. Not only that, people have stopped developing things entirely, and now just rely on cobbling together commercial "solutions". Rube Goldberg machines at their finest.
When you start worrying about provenance of your software, the problems become much more apparent.
I work with a lot of seasoned programmers, like those who wrote much of the OS for UNISYS mainframes. In fact, I replaced the retiring programmer who was prominent in the writing of their compilers. It is interesting to hear them discuss the madness of children writing software today compared to how exacting the art was in their early career.
In reply to: Re: Still I Persist
This carries a tonne of complexity into the most trivial things. Not only that, people have stopped developing things entirely, and now just rely on cobbling together commercial “solutions”. Rube Goldberg machines at their finest.
Yes, this exactly. I even used the term “Rube Goldberg machine” when ranting about this to my therapist earlier today.
Early in my career it was seen as a luxury to have 4MB of RAM on a consumer device, and now it’s a given that 4GB isn’t even remotely enough for even the most basic things. A factor of 1000, all for devices that just do largely the same thing, only worse, and slower, and requiring even more bandwidth and power to do even the most basic shit.
It’s maddening but it’s also good to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I build things to be tools that can be used generally, and what we have is an ecosystem where every device has its own set of screwdrivers that work differently and each need a complete infrastructure to even function, and they’re made of lead and fall apart the moment you exert any pressure on them.
It’s enough to make me want to become a hermit but I suspect that even the hermit life requires an active cellphone connection these days.
fluffy, Feb 18 2026 on beesbuzz.biz