Why Bloat Is Still Software’s Biggest Vulnerability
spectrum.ieee.org
A 2024 plea for lean software

The way we build and ship software these days is mostly ridiculous, leading to apps using millions of lines of code to open a garage door, and other simple programs importing 1,600 external code libraries—dependencies—of unknown provenance.

Software security is dire, which is a function both of the quality of the code and the sheer amount of it. Many of us programmers know the current situation is untenable. Many programmers (and their management) sadly haven’t ever experienced anything else. And for the rest of us, we rarely get the time to do a better job.

  • dumpsterlid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    I would say massive corporations that are deeply dysfunctional and also willing to temporarily light the entire industry on fire to stop unionization are software’s biggest vulnerability. The humans who make the code usually have no control over how anything happens, but they also have to be at such large companies to facilitate the size of projects that are required to build the software in the first place.

    At the end of the day the class war is software’s biggest vulnerability.

    • 0x815@feddit.deOPEnglish
      33·
      11 months ago

      There’s a lot wrong with big tech, but the issue is more complex. Consumers are willing to use privacy-violating apps for a variety of reasons - convenience, lack of knowledge, lack of information, inadequate legal framework and/or political unwillingness to enforce existing laws, and much more. Not everything is a ‘class war.’

      • dumpsterlid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        What is at the heart forces generating the political unwillingness?

        Why is there a lack of knowledge?

        Why weren’t politicians sitting down with privacy advocates to build better legal frameworks?

        Why are laws not being enforced?

        The answer is the same, it isn’t in the best interests of the rich who have any number of levers they can lean on and pull.

        Pretty much everything has become part of the class war, is it one note and annoying to talk about? Yes but that is the point, wealth inequality and the run away profits of the rich is destroying everything in precisely the same way repeated ad naseum in a kaleidoscope of contexts.