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

[SwampNut]

In the Win NT 3.51 example, NT's native presentation layer was abandoned for an interface compatible with x86-real-mode-Windows well into the game.

I got spit on by Ballmer once for calling out Exchange bugs circa 1998. I know, being screamed at or spit on by Ballmer is not unusual, but I like to keep it as a point of pride anyway.

EDIT: Wait, maybe it was when I said the Windows tablet was going to be a failure, 2001?

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[mkhuffman]

After all these posts, the answer to the OP is "yes".

 

[Noplacelikeloam]

COO level response to this question. "Its harder with the wrong team." and "If you think its easy, you probably don't understand the problem."

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

If it was easy, in the year 2026, Microsoft (founded in 1975) wouldn't still be releasing versions of its products with faults. Anything you don't have to do yourself look easy, because you aren't the one doing the work. And if you don't know what it takes to do something, how can you assume it's not hard? The faulty logic should be self-evident.

 

[djplong]

I've been in the trenches since the 1970s. It's hard. And when you hear that Windows XP had 35-45 *million* lines of code - just TRY managing that. Even Windows NT 3.5 from 1994 had about 8 million.

In the early 1990s, I was part of a team of software engineers in addition to being the configuration manager of a financial system that had over 2 million lines of code. It is NOT for the faint-of-heart.

 

[forestwalker]

Hard, yes.

This is the first I had heard of it shipping without all those features live. Given the groundwork already laid, and the MONUMENTAL importance of R2 being successful, I am dumbfounded that it would ship without those features live.

 

[Husky]

Agreed, that is surprising. Rivian must have struggled with getting these out and making some revenue vs delaying the launch and getting ALL the features in and tested.

 

[NinjaWrap]

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.

Vibe coding a small app? Of course that's easy now.

Writing software integrated into every function of the vehicle and making sure it's bug free (or as close as possible) without affecting other systems, no, ChatGPT/Claude isn't going to write all that for you - who wants pet mode to put a massive vampire drain on your vehicle's battery or cause your display to go blank or something?

 

[UnsungZero_OldTimeAdMan]

Vibe coding a small app? Of course that's easy now.

Writing software integrated into every function of the vehicle and making sure it's bug free (or as close as possible) without affecting other systems, no, ChatGPT/Claude isn't going to write all that for you - who wants pet mode to put a massive vampire drain on your vehicle's battery or cause your display to go blank or something?

And like so many other complaints... original sin: false equivalences.

 

[AMaier]

They seem to be in soft launch mode. It has become typical practice to release the minimum viable product for the initial media wave to avoid performance and stability issues (like the ones R1 had in it's initial release media wave), and then roll cherry picked features out one at a time to avoid risk of buggy user experiences (which mentally impact the user much more than a limited experience). It isn't great for early adopters, but the release roadmap typically puts all major 'full launch' features into the public release channel before most users get the product.

The perspective of a software engineer in interactive entertainment publishing.

 

[Zoidz]

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.

Take a hard cold look at what Claude or Gemini can do. Ask it to write you an app. Seriously. It's a game changer. What to create a movie? No problem. The software of old is hard. You have meeting about requirement. You have meetings about nice want's and features. You need to reform testing and more testing. Human factors and the list goes on. This new world with AI coding is a game changer! Those of us that code and that have managed programmers and engineers know the frustrations and many weekends and nights. AI has changed the equations completely. It's not the same world. Now you need a person that can manage what to ask the AI agent and it's mins not months.

Vibe coding a small app? Of course that's easy now.

Writing software integrated into every function of the vehicle and making sure it's bug free (or as close as possible) without affecting other systems, no, ChatGPT/Claude isn't going to write all that for you - who wants pet mode to put a massive vampire drain on your vehicle's battery or cause your display to go blank or something?

@NinjaWrap gets it.

@tgrick seems to feel that writing software for a vehicle is like building a monolithic app. It's not even close to that. Writing software for a vehicle is as much, or more, a network systems/application integration project as it is coding an app. Effective error handling and recovery is orders of magnitude more challenging. This is app development of real time systems, not a monolithic app. Did the infotainment's request to change drive modes succeed? Was there a response at all? If no response, do you retry? How many times? If there was a response that it failed, how to handle that? Retry, or display an error? etc, etc.

As far as AI goes, Claude, ChatGPT, etc. likely have little to no model training specific to automotive software architecture and development. What manufacturer put their proprietary code out on the web publicly for everyone to see? That's how Claude has become powerful - by ingesting hundreds of millions of lines of public code. That body of knowledge does not exist publicly for the specialized coding tools used for automotive systems. They are not using Visual Studio/Code, PHP, Rust, etc.

 

[djplong]

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.

Man... You are.. Wow....

AI? Are you serious? I work for the Air Force - we have several software development and maintenance contracts in our branch. I've been a lifelong software engineer/architect - literally since the Ford Administration. And I can say, you really don't know what you're talking about.

Here at the Air Force, they recently tried various AI code generators. Know what we found? For every 800 lines of code that AI generated, 700 were PURE WASTE. Crap. Slop. Less useful than an appendix is to a human. 100 lines of decent code. Basically an 87.5% per block of feces. Try extracting the 12.5% of decent stuff.

Now. Having no idea of how it was written or what the code structure is or even the standards of coding (if any) that it used - have a programmer go in there to try and fix a bug from that slop.

Comments? Standards? Oh, bless your heart if you think you're going to get that.

Can you write a small function with AI? Sure. A friend of mine does it all the time to make database procedures (and he's named the tables to specific standards so he can tell what Claude is doing with them when he has to debug them).

But a *car*? Which simply CANNOT fail? Which has to have multiple subsystems all talking to each other, programmed for EVERY contingency INCLUDING figuring out when a particular component has failed or is about to fail AND communicate that to the user or technician - even if the part that failed is a part that DOES that communication?

The more complex the use case, the more complicated (and voluminous) the code. Ask the engineers at Tesla.

 

[SwampNut]

Here at the Air Force, they recently tried various AI code generators. Know what we found? For every 800 lines of code that AI generated, 700 were PURE WASTE. Crap. Slop. Less useful than an appendix is to a human. 100 lines of decent code. Basically an 87.5% per block of feces. Try extracting the 12.5% of decent stuff.

Ahahahaha, government/military can t be efficient with any new tech? Shocker! Total surprise. LOL

My son is a finance DB dev for the Air Force.

 

[djplong]

Ahahahaha, government/military can t be efficient with any new tech? Shocker! Total surprise. LOL

My son is a finance DB dev for the Air Force.

It takes time but... Here, we were breaking the mold. What you brought up is one reason contractors have historically done the coding - but we started up a software factory here - with employees and active duty actually doing the programming.

The problems we had were:

1) Active duty personnel are rotated in and out too quickly.

2) Civilian programmers were early poached by the private sector via offering more money. They were too young to really wrap their heads around the value of the benefits here. I spent decades in the private sector and eventually, what happened in other industries started hitting software - offshoring to cheaper countries (I was in finance when that happened). After that, you were constantly looking over your shoulder. Even "full time / permanent" jobs could be cut like any contract. I'm glad I'm out of that. Much better work/life balance here. Better benefits. Better retirement plans. Better health insurance. Better job protection. Better chances for advancement, training included.. The list goes on.

...so contractors are, again, the "official" way to go.

 

[ElGuano]

Software is arguably the most complex thing humans have ever created. Not all software of course, but the amount of thought that has to go into frontend/backend design/implementation/testing, multi-component support, multi-sku support, failover/backup/exception handling, memory/resource pressure and footprinting, long term roadmapping and support, and so on, can be akin to a major project like building a house or a freeway. There's a lot that goes into it, not just one guy wearing glasses and a bowtie banging out green letters on a black screen.

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