Comment by aucisson_masque
3 days ago
You're laying it out like it's universal, in my experience there are products where people will seek for the cheapest good enough but there are also other product that people know they want quality and are willing to pay more.
Take cars for instance, if all people wanted the cheapest one then Mercedes or even Volkswagen would be out of business.
Same for professional tools and products, you save more by buying quality product.
And then, even in computer and technology. Apple iPhone aren't cheap at all, MacBook come with soldered ram and storage, high price, yet a big part of people are willing to buy that instead of the usual windows bloated spyware laptop that run well enough and is cheap.
> the cheapest one then Mercedes or even Volkswagen would be out of business
I would argue this is a bad example - most luxury cars aren't really meaningfully "better", they just have status symbol value. A mid range Honda civic or Toyota corolla is not "worse" than a Mercedes for most objective measurements.
As someone who drove both, I vehemently disagree. Stripped of logos, one is delightful, the other just nominally gets the job done.
The Mercedes has superior suspension that feels plush and smooth. Wonderful materials in the cabin that feel pleasant to the touch. The buttons press with a deep, satisfying click. The seats hug you like a soft cloud.
All of that isn’t nothing. It is difficult to achieve, and it is valuable.
All of that make the Mercedes better than a Corolla, albeit at a higher cost.
It is, pretty much, nothing. As in the job of being a car is about the same.
Will you get there faster? No. Will you get there safer? Well... no. Will you get there with less traffic? Will the drive be easier? Eh... no.
So it's about equivalent. You might be slightly more comfortable. If you happen to be paying attention when you take that measurement, otherwise you wouldn't notice.
Not everyone wants the cheapest, but lemons fail and collapse the expensive part of the market with superior goods.
To borrow your example, it's as if Mercedes started giving every 4th customer a Lada instead (after the papers are signed). The expensive Mercedes market would quickly no longer meet the luxury demand of wealthy buyers and collapse. Not the least because Mercedes would start showing super-normal profits, and all other luxury brands would get in on the same business model. It's a race to the bottom. When one seller decreases the quality, so must others. Otherwise, they'll soon be bought out, and that's the best-case scenario compared to being outcompeted.
There is some evidence that the expensive software market has collapsed. In the 00s and 90s, we used to have expensive and cheap video games, expensive and cheap video editing software, and expensive and cheap office suites. Now, we have homogeneous software in every niche — similar features and similar (relatively cheap) prices. AAA game companies attempting to raise their prices back to 90s levels (which would make a AAA game $170+ in today's money) simply cannot operate in the expensive software market. First, there was consumer distrust due to broken software, then there were no more consumers in that expensive-end market segment.
Hardware you mention (iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs) still have superior and inferior hardware options. Both ends of the market exist. The same applies to most consumer goods - groceries, clothes, shoes, jewelry, cars, fuel, etc. However, for software, the top end of the market is now non-existent. It's gone the way of expensive secondary market (resale) cars, thanks to how those with hidden defects undercut their price and destroyed consumer trust.
The issue here isn't absence, but misrecognition: the top end absolutely does exist -- it just doesn't always look like what people wish it looked like.
If by "top end" you mean "built to spec, hardened, and close to bug-free", it's alive and well in heavy manufacturing, telecommunication, automotive, aerospace, military, and medical industries. The technologies used there are not sexy (ask anyone working at Siemens or Nokia), the code wouldn't delight you, the processes are likely glacial, but there you will find software that works because it absolutely has to.
If by "top end" you mean "serves the implied user need in the best way imaginable", then modern LLMs systems are a good example. Despite the absolute mess and slop that those systems are built of, very few people come to ChatGPT and leave unsatisfied with its results.
If by "top end" you mean "beautifully engineered and maintained", think SQLite, LLVM and some OS kernels, like seL4. Those are well-written, foundational pieces of software that are not end-products in themselves, but they're built to last, studied by developers, and trusted everywhere. This is the current forefront in our knowledge of how to write software.
If by "top end" you mean "maximising profit through code", then the software in the top trading firms match this description. All those "hacker-friendly" and "tech-driven" firms run on the same sloppy code as everyone else, but they are ruthlessly optimised to make money. That's performance too.
You can carry on. For each definition of "top end", there is a real-life example of software matching it.
One can moan about the market rewarding mediocrity, but we, as technologists, all have better things to do instead of endless hand-wringing, really.