They may have upgraded the average skill set of software teams in a way we have not seen before. So why does software keep getting worse across the board? A few examples from last week alone: My banking app requires, on average, three FaceID logins before the 3D Secure confirmation view appears. I opened Slack on macOS, the icon kept bouncing in the dock for a few seconds. I got impatient, switched to Ghostty, and started typing. Just then, the Slack window appeared, stole focus from Ghostty and the git pull command was sent to the group chat. My LG fridge started making weird sounds, so I tried to file a warranty claim, through a multi-step form with countless fields. It failed with a submission error at the very end. And I only found out because I looked at the JavaScript console. My car's infotainment system got a software update recently. It was never great to begin with, but at least it didn't reboot itself during every drive. Now, it's riddled with bugs: the turn-signal sound randomly goes silent until I reboot the OS; I tap the screen to open Google Maps — the radio app shows up; there's a 1-2-second lag before anything happens after I tap the screen. This is no longer just a UX problem at this point — those bugs affect your ability to focus on driving. A few months ago, I saw a LinkedIn thread by a PM on the team that redesigned the car's OS. They were congratulating themselves on what an amazing job they had done. I keep thinking about that post every time I have to fight their product. While I can't know the full story, I'm willing to bet that most of the teams behind those bugs have access to the latest models, with generous token budgets. LLMs can be really good at squashing bugs if given the chance ptrchm.com · source
