My PlayStation 1 has never needed an update, but these days, everything comes with an updater. Like, "oh, boy, my TV needs to update again". There's something wrong.

There was actually updates via the games for the firmware

Yeah it did! It got the PS2! </s>

Visual studio installer now needs updates that are usually required before you can change the visual studio install.

People didn't need wires in the wall just to make food and such, now there's wires in the wall everywhere just to do the most basic stuff. There's something wrong.

No there isn't you dimwit! It's called technological progress, things change. Why PS1 didn't need updates? Maybe it even did but there was no fucking way to do it since there wasn't an Internet connection. Now there's internet connection and bugs can be fixed and new features added, what's the problem with that?

I swear, considering this is a tech community people really seem to hate technological progress here.

@Froot the problem if that now there is the ability to update the whole development process has gotten worse. Instead of delaying the release, bug fixes now just form an update. Games used to be tested much harder because they couldn't be updated, now so many games are released in a barely playable state and patched later.

@Froot most consoles support offlien updating, PS3 used to have an update on game disk if it needed a new firmware version

Nothing wrong with updates. It's how we get good software...

@Froot Pushing buggy code out on firmware and defending it by saying, "Oh it's fine, we can update it," is the opposite of progress.

@Froot my point is ship finished products

@jAsE I was going to write a long response but cmon man... what you wrote is wrong on all possible levels... it's just stupid...

@rjedlin So you're saying updates are defacto buggy, 100%. I don't think I agree.

@AlgoRythm Yea but if the argument is that all software is buggy then there could never be a finished 100% clean release updates are the vehicle to fix that.

@Froot No, reread what I said, because you interpreted it in a ridiculous way. We have an unhealthy obsession with updates, and serious bugs do get pushed to prod with the knowledge that updates can fix it down the line. Hyperconnectivity is not a good thing.

I'm just going to retire from this discussion 😄
Opinions differ and I'm too lazy to write out long arguments posts 😄

@jAsE it's more that your skills and mind improves faster than the system around you could keep up. Hence your perception that everything is getting worse. That's a false conclusion though.

Sure things not always get better, but overall I belive it does and following a quite good video to proof it, though it's more an example.

https://youtu.be/NbuUW9i-mHs

The underlying numbers hovever lead to the conclusion we are improving everyday. Slowly but steady ;)

@jAsE Oh Christ.

Well now in a mood for some counter examples so here comes.

Tech getting worse: Go compare image recognition from 1970 to what we have today. That sums up both the software and the hardware front.

Medical services getting worse: Go look at average life expectancy and child mortality rates. Yeah...

Developers getting worse due to abstraction: Go write Google docs in assembly of you hate abstraction so much. Abstraction happens to make development more efficient and faster and thus allowing us to have more advanced products. It's not a bad thing at all, without abstraction we would all still be sitting behind green terminals on a mainframe.

It seems to me that the core problem here is that you don't like progress because it's hard. It's easy in a static world, you learn your thing and you're set for life. In an ever evolving world tho, not so much. You got to keep the pace or be left behind, and that's hard. But it's silly to whine about it considering the benefits.

@Nanos
Medical:
Ah so life expectancy and child mortality rates have gotten worse in your country over the last 100 or so years? What country could that be? North Korea?

@Nanos Speech recognition:
Fair. Was it better in 1970 tho?
I fully get it that it might not be on par with Star Trek but it has developed a lot, there's no denying that.

@Nanos Progress:
Dude you're just cherry picking examples here. You can't go out, buy the cheapest Chinese shit possible and then use that to declare all new stuff to be shit. It's just nonsense.

@Nanos As for the global IQ drop thing, I'm going to have to ask for some references on this. It seems unlikely to me but if you can produce some valid research that confirms that then I'll believe you.

@Nanos Cool cool, there is some drop year on year. But look at the long term for Christ sake. You can't seriously argue that life expectancy and infant mortality are worse now than they were 100 years ago.

@Froot You are either a really poor debater or a really good troll. Stop jumping to ridiculous claims, strawmen, non-sequitors, and general absurdity. Life expectancy *has* dropped in the past fifty years in the USA, but that's irrelevant. The topic of discussion is why it's moronic to cut corners and push out unfinished hardware, defending it by saying updates will solve the problems. This leads to a permanent beta economy, where no product is ever actually finished, since before a company actually fixes all the bugs with one feature, they're already pushing out a new poorly tested feature in an update.

@Nanos Ok, cool. Go read up on the Flynn Effect while I take a look at the links you posted

@rjedlin Opening with a personal attack is always a sign of stellar debating skills.

Anyhow, Im not arguing about updates here. I'm debunking the wild claims that basically everything is getting worse over the long period.

As for life expectancy dropping in the US. Firstly, US != World.
Secondly, that doesn't make sense to me but I'll look Into it. Some references would help your case here.

@Nanos Dude... All that seems like the "back in my day..." talk 70 year old guys talk to their grandchildren. How everything was better and whatnot. Are you perhaps just getting old? 😄

@Nanos Dude... Seek help.