Explain to me like I’m 5…is software really that hard?

[Jeremy3292]

R2 is shipping without pet mode, Rivian assistant, Gear Guard, hotspot, garage door opener, etc. That’s quite a long list and honestly very disappointing. I hope it just needs another week or two and it’ll be out shortly, but that leads to my topic question: is software really that hard? I don’t work in this field or anything close to it so I’m genuinely curious. These seem like pretty basic things from my ignorant point of view. What say you?

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[DuoRivians]

Yes, it’s often challenging because there are many moving parts and interdependencies. When dealing with software / hardware merges like with cars, you also have to be aware of timing, interrupts, etc.

 

[Donald Stanfield]

It won't be a week or two. It took years to get R1 software to address some of these features. I've had one for 4 years now, and only got text messaging a few months ago, and it's mediocre.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

R2 is shipping without pet mode, Rivian assistant, Gear Guard, hotspot, garage door opener, etc. That’s quite a long list and honestly very disappointing. I hope it just needs another week or two and it’ll be out shortly, but that leads to my topic question: is software really that hard? I don’t work in this field or anything close to it so I’m genuinely curious. These seem like pretty basic things from my ignorant point of view. What say you?

Ask any OEM other than Rivian and Tesla if it's hard.

Or consider how much money VW shelled out to Rivian for software assistance (after already dumping billions into failed attempts).

 

[Mark_AZR1T]

R2 is shipping without pet mode, Rivian assistant, Gear Guard, hotspot, garage door opener, etc. That’s quite a long list and honestly very disappointing. I hope it just needs another week or two and it’ll be out shortly, but that leads to my topic question: is software really that hard? I don’t work in this field or anything close to it so I’m genuinely curious. These seem like pretty basic things from my ignorant point of view. What say you?

You are right, there isn't anything really hard about it (not at this point in the game). They simply had other priorities when rushing to get the R2 released, so those items took a backseat. To me it is embarrassing and I have been part of the Rivian journey since Dec. 08. 2018.

 

[RickS WA]

Long, long ago in the '80's I was responsible for the process automation group at a mining company. You can learn to write code in a month or two. Its not hard. However, learning to write a program to control/automate something is an entirely different beast. At the end of the job, a successful programmer knows the hardware, and all interconnected systems better than the original designers and experienced users. He/She understands how every component or action interacts with every other component and how 1 user input can and does affect multiple other things. There is huge gap between being able to write code and being able write programs for complex interactive systems! Working through the interactions takes time and thought. Porting software and logic over to different, even though similar hardware is not simply copy/paste. You have follow through and check ALL of the interactions, even some you originally though didn't exist. The more complex the system, the more Murphy's law intercedes.

 

[Throwdown]

R2 is shipping without pet mode, Rivian assistant, Gear Guard, hotspot, garage door opener, etc. That’s quite a long list and honestly very disappointing. I hope it just needs another week or two and it’ll be out shortly, but that leads to my topic question: is software really that hard? I don’t work in this field or anything close to it so I’m genuinely curious. These seem like pretty basic things from my ignorant point of view. What say you?

Yes, thats why everytime there is an update something else stops working properly. The EV macan was 2 years late to being sold because the software company Cariad quit on them and it all had to be redone.

 

[DCFC]

R2 is shipping without pet mode, Rivian assistant, Gear Guard, hotspot, garage door opener, etc. That’s quite a long list and honestly very disappointing. I hope it just needs another week or two and it’ll be out shortly, but that leads to my topic question: is software really that hard? I don’t work in this field or anything close to it so I’m genuinely curious. These seem like pretty basic things from my ignorant point of view. What say you?

Yes. VW spent around $15 billion on CARIAD for vehicle software, couldn't get it right, and gave up and is now paying Rivian billions in the joint venture.

 

[DCFC]

You are right, there isn't anything really hard about it (not at this point in the game). They simply had other priorities when rushing to get the R2 released, so those items took a backseat. To me it is embarrassing and I have been part of the Rivian journey since Dec. 08. 2018.

Why is it embarrassing? Software requires some finite hours of work to get it completed and also to get it done correctly. There are only so many people and so many hours in a day. You saw Rivian just laid off more people right? So, that already tells you they are people resource constrained.

The other option would be to delay the launch of R2 for the software to catch up for non-essential features. I think all of us agree that would be a bad move as that would delay revenue growth.

 

[mkhuffman]

Ask Lucid Gravity owners how they feel about software quality.

Rivian is holding back features for one simple reason: customer satisfaction. You may be annoyed a feature isn't available yet, but you would be pissed beyond belief if the feature was there and wasn't reliable. Slow and steady might actually win the race.

 

[runwithscissors]

They've masterd cell shading if that's any consolation.

 

[Zathras]

R2 is shipping without pet mode, Rivian assistant, Gear Guard, hotspot, garage door opener, etc. That’s quite a long list and honestly very disappointing. I hope it just needs another week or two and it’ll be out shortly, but that leads to my topic question: is software really that hard? I don’t work in this field or anything close to it so I’m genuinely curious. These seem like pretty basic things from my ignorant point of view. What say you?

Yes, it's way harder than you can possibly imagine. You simply don't go to the software store and say, "Give me a pet mode for my car." It' has to be custom designed for the specific operating system running on the car. And out of a hundred thousand lines of code, if someone puts a bad comma in, or forgets a quote mark, or whatever, you can crash the app and your pet is not safe and cool. And then there's every other app in the car, not to mention the computers, the sensors, the other software that might need to interact with Pet Mode (camera in the mirror to let you take a peek at your pet).

And you can't go to ChatGPT and say, "Make me a pet mode." Or you are going to fail and be fired.

They said the "missing" apps are going to be here in a few months. They simply did not want to hold up the launch of the car for non-critical apps. No matter how well off Rivian is, getting the launch date done for the R2 is vastly more important than anything else they are doing at this point.

 

[junglebird]

Retired software dude here. Writing a little code to do something simple in isolation is fairly easy. Making it work in a larger ecosystem is surprisingly difficult. Moving existing working code to a new platform can also be surprisingly difficult.

My guess with R2 is that the missing features like Pet Mode are already developed but they didn't have time to fully certify them. They had to make priority calls months ago to lock in the features in order to get the vehicle to customers by June and make the investors happy. Better to ship earlier with some relatively minor features disabled to get the revenue flowing than to wait or ship with buggy untested code. These should all be tested and activated by the time R2 is going out to more than the first few thousand customers.

 

[tgrick]

I used to be hard. Not anymore. AI can write the code in a fraction of the time required. What would take months is a few hours. I suspect RIVIAN is concerned about software privacy and it's a very valid concern. That said, I'm sure they will figure it out. So a year ago, it would take a team and months. Now, it's far simpler.

 

[JacobAZ]

The correct question, is it hard to develop and maintain complex software that must run on multiple versions of hardware/OS and always work? Yes, it's incredibly difficult. My career involved running several of the largest successful software development programs at that time. Very few people have the ability due to the complexity, and of these many, having done it once, never want to do it again (after 2 times I said no more). It can be all consuming for several years of 80 hour work weeks. But is pays really well. Even the developers will end up putting in a lot of hours (we were all salary, no overtime).

There are 5 major steps/phases

1. Requirements - details of what the system is to do. NO design. People want to speak in final design terms. That does not work. The analyst must derive what actually is NEEDED, not a preconceived design. This is where many large programs fail. Requires asking a lot of "Why" questions to get to what is really needed. Requirements must be organized documented in a manner that can be translated to design.
2. Design - This is where you layout all the technical stuff on paper, programs, interfaces etc. The biggest challenge in a complex system is to ensure you have everything connected and working together. Nothing missing.
3. Program/Code - This is where the design is broken out to individuals to write code. On large systems there will be multiple teams, with each team creating code which must integrate with the other teams. Testing of individual programs and units occurs here.
4. Testing - Multiple types of testing, ultimately testing the entire system working together as one. Although testing is about ensuring software will do what it is supposed to do, more time is spent ensuring it does not do, or allow unwanted things to happen.
5. Implementation - Often very complex and involves a set of programs to do it, which require a lot of testing. When an update is downloaded it must remove and disconnect old software, reconnecting new software. AND it has to do this for R1 Gen 1, Gen 2 . and now R2, each of which has different hardware and software ... which had be addressed back in design.

Yep it's hard. As others have said, this is why VW is paying a lot to not develop their own. They know how hard it is. It's also why GM purchased EDS in the 1980's. GM had tried and failed several times with large programs, so they purchased one of the largest software development companies.

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