<story><title>Software is eating the car</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/software-eating-car</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>temporallobe</author><text>Car guy here. Yeah, I’m with you. My favorite car was a ‘96 Tercel with mechanical steering and a 4-speed manual. It even had manual roll-up windows. It had less than 100 HP, but it was simple as hell to operate, very fun to drive, cheap to maintain, and extremely reliable up until I sold it with nearly 400k miles on the odo. I put an aftermarket stereo and speakers in it and I was set. Only reason I sold it was because my wife hated it and a friend needed a cheap reliable car for his idiot son who proceeded to neglect and destroy it quickly after taking possession.&lt;p&gt;Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department, but they are a hell of a lot safer, so there’s that.</text></item><item><author>SavantIdiot</author><text>Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets.&lt;p&gt;In my 40+ years in the industry I&amp;#x27;ve yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90&amp;#x27;s which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code has always bloated.&lt;p&gt;Damn. I just want a car with as FEW knobs&amp;#x2F;buttons&amp;#x2F;levers as necessary. Literally: make it as simple as possible. Like an golf cart! Is anyone else out there with me? I feel like Walter from The Big Lebowski regarding this: has everyone just gone crazy?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrwoodruff</author><text>Those mid 90s Japanese sedans were awesome. Relatively compact overall, zippy little 4 cylinders engines and manual transmissions. I had an Accord from that era, and loved driving my dads nerdy-as-hell Nissan Sentra. That car was shockingly fun to drive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Software is eating the car</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/software-eating-car</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>temporallobe</author><text>Car guy here. Yeah, I’m with you. My favorite car was a ‘96 Tercel with mechanical steering and a 4-speed manual. It even had manual roll-up windows. It had less than 100 HP, but it was simple as hell to operate, very fun to drive, cheap to maintain, and extremely reliable up until I sold it with nearly 400k miles on the odo. I put an aftermarket stereo and speakers in it and I was set. Only reason I sold it was because my wife hated it and a friend needed a cheap reliable car for his idiot son who proceeded to neglect and destroy it quickly after taking possession.&lt;p&gt;Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department, but they are a hell of a lot safer, so there’s that.</text></item><item><author>SavantIdiot</author><text>Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets.&lt;p&gt;In my 40+ years in the industry I&amp;#x27;ve yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90&amp;#x27;s which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code has always bloated.&lt;p&gt;Damn. I just want a car with as FEW knobs&amp;#x2F;buttons&amp;#x2F;levers as necessary. Literally: make it as simple as possible. Like an golf cart! Is anyone else out there with me? I feel like Walter from The Big Lebowski regarding this: has everyone just gone crazy?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clairity</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department, but they are a hell of a lot safer, so there’s that.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;tangentially, &amp;quot;safety&amp;quot; is highly cargo-culted. things that seem so obviously safer are taken without question as better, but in many cases, such features really only provide a false sense of security along with substantive unintended consequences.&lt;p&gt;most safety features in cars (e.g., lane-keeping) allow people to be less skilled and less attentive at driving, rather than lowering crash&amp;#x2F;injury&amp;#x2F;death rates. the better solution is to make people better and more attentive at driving through more rigorous training&amp;#x2F;testing, more thoughtful design, and importantly, culture, rather than just technology for its own sake.</text></comment>