News Flash: Software Has a Quality Problem. Insight!

November 3, 2025

This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

I read “The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe.” What’s interesting about this essay is that the author cares about doing good work.

The write up states:

We’ve normalized software catastrophes to the point where a Calculator leaking 32GB of RAM barely makes the news. This isn’t about AI. The quality crisis started years before ChatGPT existed. AI just weaponized existing incompetence.

Marketing is more important than software quality. Right, rube? Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.

The bound phrase “weaponized existing incompetence” points to an issue in a number of knowledge-value disciplines. The essay identifies some issues he has tracked; for example:

Memory consumption in Google Chrome
Windows 11 updates breaking the start menu and other things (printers, mice, keyboards, etc.)
Security problems such as the long-forgotten CrowdStrike misstep that cost customers about $10 billion.

But the list of indifferent or incompetent coding leads to one stop on the information superhighway: Smart software. The essay notes:

But the real pattern is more disturbing. Our research found:

AI-generated code contains 322% more security vulnerabilities

45% of all AI-generated code has exploitable flaws

Junior developers using AI cause damage 4x faster than without it

70% of hiring managers trust AI output more than junior developer code

We’ve created a perfect storm: tools that amplify incompetence, used by developers who can’t evaluate the output, reviewed by managers who trust the machine more than their people.

I quite like the bound phrase “amplify incompetence.”

The essay makes clear that the wizards of Big Tech AI prefer to spend money on plumbing (infrastructure), not software quality. The write up points out:

When you need $364 billion in hardware to run software that should work on existing machines, you’re not scaling—you’re compensating for fundamental engineering failures.

The essay concludes that Big Tech AI as well as other software development firms shift focus.

Several observations:

Good enough is now a standard of excellence
“Go fast” is better than “good work”
The appearance of something is more important than its substance.

Net net: It’s a TikTok-, YouTube, and carnival midway bundled into a new type of work environment.

Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, News, Technology

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.