This person got so so close to the real answer as to why most software today sucks.
Money.
Capitalism.
Line go up - Forever.
It's the systems we choose to live in, not the leaders who take advantage of them.
Really cool software has been coming out all the time for the last decade or so, and then the second it goes public and starts trading stocks, it immediately starts going south. A company, making cool stuff I love, goes public, and I know to immediately start grieving for its death. Money makes all creative endeavors so so much worse. And I truly believe software is a creative pursuit. It's been hijacked by capitalists to automate every living being on this planet out of work. Right now the list of people truly put out on their ass for good by automation isn't very big. But we're accelerating very quickly to a future where nothing fun ever happens again. Useful, functional, problem solving software, from now until forever, will be made and used to kick your ass, stomp you into the dirt, and sell your stupid crying face to anybody who wants to purchase it. Then while we're at it, it'll take the things you love to do and do them for you. And then make you pay money just to see it.
If you want to see and participate in some of the most unique and amazing uses of software engineering in our time, there are so many open source projects that achieve incredible and fun things for absolutely $0
- Video Game Randomizers
- And their decomp partners
- Mod Communities
- Free Digital Art Programs
- Open up Github, sort by most Starred projects, and just fuckin scroll until you can't scroll anymore
- And even this has been captured. Code made freely for everyone to use, instead being fed to machine learning bullshit. To what end? To fully replace the need for any human to ever write software ever again.
It's endless. There are truly too many projects for me to list in one post. I'd spend weeks editing this comment, adding all the coolest things software has done for us and can do for us. But it doesn't matter. None of it matters. I am 100% confident society and its leaders will abuse the good will, passion, and creativity of many a programmer from now until the end of my life. It'll do that to every profession. As long as we cling to the idea that we only do work to make profits, as long as the only way we can survive is by making money, this will be our fate.