Decoding the Decline: Experts Pin Software Quality Issues on Complexity, Legacy Stacks, Not AI or Rust

Recent observations across the software landscape indicate a noticeable decline in application stability and user experience, sparking widespread frustration among developers and consumers alike. Users report frequent issues ranging from random operating system crashes on Windows and macOS, intermittent hardware disconnects, and persistent UI glitches in iOS (e.g., unresponsive message editing, blurry navigation bars), to critical failures in popular applications like Twitter, Uber, and YouTube’s picture-in-picture functionality. Even gaming platforms like PlayStation are cited for boot failures and controller connectivity problems, painting a grim picture of modern software reliability. In stark contrast, a few projects stand out for their exceptional stability: Ghosty (a terminal in Zig), Lossless Cut (an Electron-based video editor), and Helium (a Chromium-patched app). These projects share common traits—being open-source, passion-driven, and often maintained by one or two dedicated individuals—suggesting that project ethos and resource allocation may play a more significant role than underlying technology choices.

Contrary to popular belief, this deterioration in software quality is not primarily attributed to the rise of AI or specific programming languages and frameworks such as Rust, Electron, or Swift UI. An illustrative example is the massive Cloudflare outage, caused by human-written, human-reviewed Rust code that failed due to an unhandled error related to memory limits, completely unrelated to AI generation. Instead, industry experts highlight several fundamental drivers: the exponential increase in software complexity and codebase size (e.g., iOS’s installed size growing from under 1GB to nearly 14GB), the pervasive reliance on decade-old software stacks that haven’t fundamentally evolved, and the expanding mandate for software to function flawlessly across an ever-growing array of diverse platforms (from multiple OS versions to various streaming devices). Economic incentives further exacerbate this, pushing companies to rush new features to market without adequate quality assurance or thorough code review, leading to a culture where the willingness to merge code often outpaces the capacity to maintain quality. The result is bloated, fragile systems that are increasingly difficult to debug, maintain, and update effectively, with insufficient investment in crucial areas like QA and security research.