Why Does Software Spoil?

Interesting to read all this, especially the comments about open source. I use an open source application every day for professional work, and it has nothing I would call bloat in spite of a very long and growing feature list. Blender. The user interface is so non-standard that the program is hard to learn, but once learned it is a dream to use, so they can keep it that way as far as I am concerned. Because it is for 3D modelling, animation and rendering and for visual effects it needs a lot of features, but it stands up remarkably well in the face of competition. Iā€™ve been using 3D Studio Max while studying with some experienced professionals, and for what I do at home Blender is easier to use, far easier. Blender loads in a fraction of the time and yet has all the features I need for my 3D graphics modelling work.

And of course some open source software is crap; most of it probably. This also applies to commercial software too, thatā€™s why most new software companies last less than eighteen months. Just because you have an idea for some software doesnā€™t mean the idea is any good, and even if the idea is brilliant, you might have ambitions much bigger than you or your programming team can manage to code properly.

What do you do then, when your company writes only one piece of software, and that software is as good as perfect?

Move to greener pastures. Port it to another OS if thereā€™s need for it. Make an universal binary version if necessary. Invent a new product or improve an existing one of the competitor. There are enough itches to scratch.

@ steffenj : ah yes, ACDSee. The problems started when they included the mp3 and movie player in the image viewer for some stupid reason. For an even more stupid reason, I havenā€™t found a way in the newer versions to just turn this option off, which results in the fact that after browsing 3-4 images itā€™ll encounter an mp3 and then the CPU spends a few seconds on preloading/caching/buffering. Itā€™ll accept that it wonā€™t open any extension under the sun anymore, but it will still browse mp3 and movie files. I just want it to skip that.

re: 7-zip; thereā€™s one thing Iā€™m missing, and thatā€™s shift-clicking to drag the files literally out of the archive so the original file goes poof and youā€™re left with only the contents. WinRAR does this, 7-zip does not. Or is this implemented in a newer version?

Open source software generally suffers from another kind of bloat - that of the interface. As youā€™re free to include any new option thatā€™s possible and lay out insane settings/preferences windows, youā€™ll soon get to the point of 15 tabs to set only how you want to see things on the screen. If anything, they need sane defaults and UI/UX designers. Itā€™s nice to have choices; itā€™s nicer to package this choice in a sane way, and that shouldnā€™t mean reflecting the config files directly in the UI.

Wow, have to agree on so many levels. I use WinAmp 3 light, ACDSee 2.2 and JASC Paint Shop Pro 7.0. If it ainā€™t broken, donā€™t fix it.

VirtualDUB: copy that, am still using it too. This goes second on my list of programs without bloat which satisfied my need for years. If only it were (still) able to open WMV though ā€¦

This is why Iā€™m so glad notepad has never changed. Even DOS windows started to get cleverer to keep up with the cut-n-paste revolution, but if you just want to scribble, then Notepad.exe will always be available, no matter what version of windows youā€™re using, no matter whose computer youā€™re on (as long as itā€™s a PC).

Reminds of a more simple lifeā€¦

Although, to be fair, I did like it when notepad got the CTRL+S shortcut for saving post-NTā€¦

You can now use Emacs to edit video too :stuck_out_tongue:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/80956

Brilliant article again Jeffā€¦ how many times have I said to myself ā€œwhat have they done to Acrobat Reader?ā€

It seems the applications I have been impressed with the most are those written for software engineering - although the overhead is much larger to run these apps - look at the quality, look and feel and power of VS.NET 2005 over 2003ā€¦ impressive.

On another note - why do I have to type the word ORANGE in every time I want to post a comment?

I Know this is ā€œanti-bot postingā€ technology - but isnā€™t there a better way of doing this - it puts me into an ā€œORANGEā€ frame of mind, which being ginger is ok - but I often associate ORANGE with a warning (its about to fail - condition ORANGE, or is that soylent green?) ;o)

can we change the Enter the word to ā€œPOSITIVEā€ or ā€œWHITEā€ or ā€œTHOUGHTSā€ or something abit less aggresive?

just a thoughtā€¦

Some software remains good because it supports the developerā€™s business, but it is boring to themā€”they make it keep working for you without having to write press releases about it.

Appleā€™s TextEdit in OS X is the first word processor with formatting that I really like since MS Word 4.1, I think. Basic text formatting, powerful typography and a ruler, the standard OS spellchecker. Reads and writes .rtf and .doc, and they are about to add OpenDocument and Word 2007, hopefully the basic interface stays simple.

Appleā€™s Image Capture works just fine with any scanner, without being craptacular in a dozen different ways like every singe scanner manufacturersā€™ Mac software.

Letā€™s hear it for boring software!

In the tools of the trade category, I switched from Anarchie FTP years ago when it was becoming the kitchen sink to Panicā€™s Transmit, which still looks the same and works great. The newer tabbed interface actually lets me multitask projects without clutter.

BBEdit is a bit like command-line software: theyā€™ve added a lot, but it stays out of the way. Almost everything has remained fast.

I think that Winamp is a fairly good example of listening to your users. They realised that Winamp 3 was crap, and kept developing Winamp 2, and even having some sense of humour about it. ā€œALMOST AS NEW AS WINAMP 2 Nullsoft Winamp3ā€

I still use Winamp (with the old UI) for playing net radio and random files, even though I now prefer to manage my music libary with iTunes.

What do you do then, when your company writes only one piece of software, and that software is as good as perfect?

Move to greener pastures. Port it to another OS if thereā€™s need for it. Make an universal binary version if necessary. Invent a new product or improve an existing one of the competitor. There are enough itches to scratch.

I tried to answer that in the rest of my paragraph: ā€œI think many companies find it easier to just add features and features because they think it is to risky to start working on an entirely new project.ā€

OK, then is all commercial software doomed to crush itself under feature creep eventually?

In a word: yes. But not just commercial software - open source software as well. In pre-internet days, new versions primarily consisted of bug fixes, algorithm improvements, and UI modifications with a few new (and typically useful) features thrown in for good measure.

Along came the internet, and someone somewhere had the (good) idea to offer bug fixes and updates to customers for free. Only afterwards did they realize that this reduced the substantial changes between versions (and thus the reason for the customers to upgrade). To combat this, you have the feature creep.

The underlying problem is the reproducibility of software. When an engineer designs a bridge, he designs it to the best of his ability and then heā€™s done. He stops active development on that bridge and goes on to design the next one. That engineer can make a career out of designing the same bridge over and over again. In the software world, if you stop developing youā€™re out of a job but your software lives on and continues to sell.

The same thing happens with most open source software only at a much slower rate because open source software development tends to be slower than commercial software.

Essentially, until developers (and their managers) learn how to say ā€œokay, this application is doneā€ this trend will continue.

Thatā€™s my $0.02 anyway.

CD/DVD burner program recomendation InfraRecorder (http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/)

I rush to post this and get out of here before you guys kill me with stones or something. A piece of software I think never bloated over the time - Windows.
Now sit back in your chair and relax. Here is what I mean:

First, Iā€™ve never seen a version of Windows that loads slower than the previous versions, Mooreā€™s law taken into account. Itā€™s not that Windows becomes faster, itā€™s just that IT DOES NOT OUTRUN MOOREā€™S LAW. This means that my Windows 95 on my 486 loaded slower than XP on my Core Duo.
Second, Windows, from its infancy always had tons of useless features. We have all watched Ballmer in that commercial of Windows 1.0 shouting ā€˜Reversiā€™ (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1769003739231727974q=ballmer+windowstotal=212start=0num=10so=0type=searchplindex=1). So in my opinion XP does not have more useless features than 1.0 - just about the same amount, which - having in mind the progress made - is pretty good. And think of how many improvements were done.
That said, I agree about all the comments about Winamp, PSP, Media Player and the like.

@Jeffrey Odell

I completely agree with you. I stopped upgrading to new versions of Quicken in 2000. At that point, it did everything I wanted it to do, and it did it well. I canā€™t imagine what Intuit has been doing to Quicken over the last 7 years (man, thatā€™s a lot of development effort!), but I know I donā€™t need any of it.

The caterpillar looks so much prettier than the butterfly.

I dig Notepad++, Paint.NET, FileZillaā€¦ If I think of more un-bloated apps, Iā€™ll post them.

Other examples of software that has become spoiled : HomeSite, CoolEdit.

I think jldugger put my thoughts better than I would have done:

ā€œAt some point, they discovered selling to existing customers was a far less scary proposition than finding new customers to sell software for that doesnā€™t exist. The once great entrepreneurial spirit of the company, writing new programs, has diminished in the face of finding a few reasons to sell your customers something they basically already own.ā€

Exactly what happened with PSP, firstly when it went paid-for and secondly (and much much more worserer) when Corel bought it and decided it was an asset to be sweated.

I donā€™t use PSP any more. Iā€™m a Paint.NET guy now, even though it doesnā€™t do as much as PSP did in its golden era (version 6 to 8 for me). If I need more I go to Photoshop Elements, although I canā€™t say I like it much.