http://betanews.com/2012/04/16/has-programming-lost-its-way-part-two/
If you wonder why many businesses are still using Windows XP, a more than 10 year old operating system, perhaps the old adage is true: "it if isn't broken, don't fix it".
For example, I live in a rural area and in just a few years I have gone from dial-up Internet, to 768Kbps high-speed and now 1.5GB. Now I can download stuff a lot faster, which is nice, but my overall experience with websites has not improved as dramatically as I had hoped. Website developers assume that more people have high-speed connections, so they get careless about how fast pages will load. Improved broadband speeds are lost because of careless web design. A similiar thing has happened with software. As computers get faster and faster, the experience does not necessarily get better and better.
I really don't get the impression were are producing all that much better software than we did in the past. Coding environments definitely lack simplicity. Software is slower than it needs to be. Software is likely still just as riddled with bugs as it was 15 years ago. Software development is likely no more productive than it was 15 years ago. User experience is not necessarily significantly improved compared to the past.
An Interesting Experiment
An interesting experiment to try is this: If you can find an old copy of Windows 95/98 sitting around and some old CPU intensive application that dates back to Windows 95/98 (ie. 3D Modeler designer), try installing the software on a computer that is far more powerful than what was available when the software was available. For example, install it on a computer with a 1 ghz CPU with 1GB memory. Most of the computers when Windows 95/98 were around were likely less than 100MHz in speed. You may be surprised to see how "fast and fluid" the experience is using the software. Now imagine running the software on, say, a top-of-the-line, multi-core CPU we have today.
