Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I don't program myself, but I do manage developers for 20yrs+. I normally don't care about what paradigm programmers use, but what I do empirically observe is that time spend on (automated) testing, refactoring and bug fixing is much higher in an object oriented environment. It seems from outside that the ability of producing reasonably bug free code is much lower when using OOP, hence the need of faster deployment cycles.

Other industries went the way of producing good quality products whereas IT seems to use the approach to test the quality into the products and to fix, quite often when product is already at customer. This normally turns out be more expensive and have less quality in the products at the same time.



> This normally turns out be more expensive and have less quality in the products at the same time.

Hypothesis: software market has near zero barriers to entry, so while other industries are protected from would-be competitors by large up-front expenses, for most purely-software products anyone can rapidly build a half-assed clone of whatever you're doing and start eating into your customer base - making software companies obsess over velocity / feature delivery rate, and/or seeking all kinds of non-software barriers to entry (e.g. network effects, or content deals - like, it wouldn't be hard to make a better Spotify client, but good luck replicating the deals Spotify has with recording labels).


Exactly.

Hypothesis 2: this is why you have a lot of anti-capitalistic talk among tech folk.

The whole concept of "anyone can replicate my product, but I got here first, so i have to use lock-ins and other ethically questionable things if I want to keep my spot" is antithetical to the goals of capitalism i.e companies out-competing each other constantly, leading to better and better products.

The equilibrium with monopolies that is possible under capitalism is reached really, really easily in tech. Because being a monopoly/locking-in, not open sourcing, etc, is the only way you can be a big tech company.

In my opinion, industries with low barriers of entry are fundamentally incompatible with - atleast the current flavor of - capitalism, if you use user harm as the metric.


> In my opinion, industries with low barriers of entry are fundamentally incompatible with - atleast the current flavor of - capitalism, if you use user harm as the metric.

Agreed. Tech is exemplary here, and so is all media since it went digital: when natural barriers to entry are low, the first thing companies do is to establish artificial ones, whether by abusing the legal system, or by piling up so much marketing bullshit it creates new barriers ex nihilo, right there in the minds of consumers.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: