Every other business has figured out a way to operate on a single transaction model where I give them money and they give me a product and that is the end of our relationship until I need something else that they make. Somehow we have managed to operate in this manner for hundreds of years. Why is software development any different?

▲ xnorswap an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Because people expect:

  1. bug fixes and updates
  2. Services to work in the "cloud"

If you bought a piece of software, received precisely that version and never got updates, and didn't expect your data to magically follow you around, then we could have that model, as evidenced by that model working well back when software largely did work that way.

▲ organsnyder an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Software used to work like this. You'd pay for a shrink-wrapped product, and the only updates you'd ever get (if you're lucky) would be for major bugfixes.

Subscriptions have gotten ridiculous, but with the way we've come to expect frequent updates the pay-once model isn't sustainable for many products.

	▲	miyoji an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Okay, well I don't want most of the updates I get for most of the software I've paid for. I often cancel subscriptions due to unwanted updates. Spotify was a good app once upon a time, but it sucks now. If I could pay to use the old version, I would, but Spotify won't let me because they think they know better. Additionally, shipped software used to not need too many updates most of the time, because the expectation was that the thing you bought was the thing, and any updates would be to address major defects in the product. Now, most software is delivered in "MVP" form where it doesn't even have all the features most users would want, and they get slowly dripped in over time, or they don't, and you never get the thing you originally wanted from the software at all. Overall I think this has been mainly a loss for consumers. Security is better, and that's a real win, but frequently updated software is usually lower quality software, because it can be.

▲ wffurr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That might work if the software platform vendors kept compatibility with old versions, but they're quite poor at this. Windows used to be quite good at it, but Android and iOS are really bad at it, and macOS is not a lot better.

Software is, unfortunately, a living thing and when not actively maintain bit-rots and becomes unusable.

▲ carimura an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed.

"I don't need a receipt for the donut, I'll just give you some money, you give me the donut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this."

▲ bellowsgulch an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Because your fucking bananas aren't connected to servers in a datacenter that require you to pay monthly bills and engineers need to get paid more than people stacking rocks for living.