We're not innovating, we're just forgetting slower

> we’ve traded reliability and understanding for the illusion of progress.

I wish there was a somewhat rigorous way to quantify reliability of tech products so that we could conclude if tech on average was about as buggy in the past.

I mean I also feel that things are more buggy and unreliable, but I don't know if there's any good way to measure it.

I mean. I takes over a second with a blocking loading indicator to change car temperature by one degree: https://grumpy.website/1665

This... This is quite quantifiable

I'm conflicted. I remember when I bought my first vehicle with electronic ignition. It wasn't as good as the electronic ignition today and I had to replace a few black box components that I didn't understand (what is a "thick film module" anyways???). So I was irritated and wished that my truck still had points and a regular distributor.

Flash forward to today. I can't remember the last time I replaced an ignition system component. I still don't know how they work. I can guarantee that the techs who do occasionally replace them at the dealer don't know how they work. But the whole system is so much more reliable.

That said, I do wonder how young people are supposed to learn and gain understanding in a world where they cannot possibly understand the components in complex systems. Back in the day (I know, yelling at a cloud), I could actually understand how a set of points and a distributor -- or a even a three-transistor radio -- worked.

If you look e.g. at websites, I think we can measure that the average website today is slower to load than 15 years ago, even though hardware is orders of magnitude faster.

Another thing is that today, you receive updates. So bugs get fixed, new bugs get introduced, it makes it harder to track other than "well, there are always bugs". Back then, a bug was there for life, burnt on your CD-ROM. I'm pretty sure software shipped on CD-ROM was a lot more tested than what we deploy now. You probably wouldn't burn thousands of CD-ROM with a "beta" version. Now the norm is to ship beta stuff and use 0-based versioning [1] because we can't make anything stable.

Lastly, hardware today is a lot cheaper than 25 years ago. So now you buy a smartphone, it breaks after a year, you complain for 5min and you buy a new one. Those devices are almost disposable. 25 years ago you had to spend a lot of money on a PC, so it had to last for a while and be repairable.

[1]: https://0ver.org/

From playing video games, I'm going to say that generally games are more reliable today than they were in 2005, and I recall a few absolute fucking howlers from the 90s and 2000s (looking at you, Digimon World!)

My comparison points: Fallout 3 being a shitshow of bugs on release vs Final Fantasy 7 Remake & Rebirth feeling practically bug-free on release. In fact, I don't think I hit any bugs in Final Fantasy 16 either.

Rest assured, Bethesda’s next release will be another bugfest. Not exactly a useful comparison.

On the other hand you didn't have "download this multigigabyte patch on day 1" because once burned to a CD it was there forever.

Same for "you haven't touched your game console? here's 200 gigabytes of updates at 200kb/s"

They probably will but they’re the comparisons I have to hand and, let’s be honest, this entire discussion is based on anecdotes.

Having had a PS4 and a PS5, I’d say even this has improved.

I'm sure specific issues are quantifiable. But trying to quantify the overall trend seems like a challenge.