GoKawiilIf coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
As I’m writing this, we’re in the middle of an AI-induced mass psychosis. People are literally token-maxxing themselves into hospital beds, scrambling to capture some of that market value before everything is automated away. I can’t blame them. Models keep getting better, programmers are being laid off left and right. We’ve been repeatedly told that AI will write 100% of the code by the end of the year. Whether that’s true or not, this may not be the best time to sit back.
The widespread excitement around the Agentic Era comes with the promise of greater productivity and higher quality. There’s no denying that these new tools have already revolutionized how we create and use software. They have raised upper management’s expectations for team output. 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.
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.
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