I recently learned a new meme (word?), “enshittification”.

Quoting the article:

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

The writer called this enshittification.

I observed this “degradation” phenomenon also happening to softwares (looking at you, Google Chrome), tools, programming frameworks, and many things.

We are all trapped in the enshittification of the Internet.

A generation is lost. We don’t know how to build software that lasts for decades. Schools hardly teach that anymore.

The reality is, it is business — people need things fast, and they can’t wait a year to get a polished product, so they will get something that does the job with a few bugs and workarounds so they can get on with their business.

Anti-long lasting software: brittle, bloated, performance is not a feature, bigger is better, unsustainable business model, business disguise as open source software, not self-hostable, dark tactics, sign-up/subscribe first to use, data collection, doesn’t degrade gracefully with poor Internet connection, memory/CPU hogger, data hostage, feature creep, never ending churn under your feet, over-engineered, hype-driven, for the sake of “modern”.

The herd mentality make it worst. Everything is increasingly complex. A few examples:

  • Kubernetes instead of VPS
  • microservices instead of monolithic app (Django)
  • Spark instead of Bash scripts
  • MongoDB Cloud instead of PostgreSQL

I brought that up because as a software crafter, I am reminded again today by this piece written by Neovim’s author about Bram and VIM: https://neovim.io/news/2023/08

Quoting the article:

never appealed to sensationalism or personal judgements

… responded only to advance his understanding of a problem to solve. Bram was one of those humans quietly providing deep value to the universe, but there was no parade and little celebrity.

… anchored to reality, directly interested in results and adjusting what produced them. The “Problem/Solution” mantra in his commit messages is simple yet profoundly effective.

VIM is more than just a code editor. I like:

  • VIM has soul — they are principled
  • Less dogmatic, more pragmatic
  • Integrity (don’t sell out)
  • Going against the flow (not boring)
  • Stable but dare to innovate
  • Know what they are doing (not mindless and blindly follow)