From cars to software to movies, we live in the golden age of quality and affordability. And yet, I often hear people complain about the quality of things and how they ‘don’t make them like they used to’. I’ve thought a lot about this and I attribute this to two things: First, Survivor Bias, where we remember those things that survived and not those that failed. Second, nostalgia– the fact that as time passes memories of the past become fonder.

Survivor Bias

A great example of Survivor Bias in action is a recent discussion I had about movies. The typical refrain of ‘movies aren’t as good as they used to be’ came up. I happen to be a big lover of old movies, especially from the 1930s through 1950s. Movies like ‘Bringing up Baby’ or ‘The Philadelphia Story” are great films I’d encourage anyone to see.

The problem with comparing those movies against “today’s movies is that we are taking the very best of the movies from back then, those movies still worth watching, and comparing them to all of the movies made today. This would be like comparing all baseball players today against Babe Ruth and Willie Mays and declaring that today’s baseball players aren’t as good.

Cary Grant, one of the greatest actors in history, starred in at least 76 films. Even those of us who love old movies usually have only seen a dozen or so of his works. Movies such as “Enter Madame!” or “Dream Wife”, remain obscure for a reason; they aren’t very good.

It is very true that the average movie today doesn’t compare to Cary Grant’s greatest, but even in the genre of romantic comedies such great movies as “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Crazy Rich Asians” give “Bringing Up Baby” and “The Philadelphia Story” stiff competition.

In short, it’s not that new movies have gotten worse over time, it’s that time has weeded out the inferior ones and left posterity with the high-quality ones. It is estimated that 10,000 movies were made in the 1930s. I recognized about twenty in a list of those that survived, or one in every 500. It’s simply unfair to compare the top .2% of movies from the past to all of the movies today. What I see today is high quality movies of all sorts, such that I believe the 2020s will, in the future, be seen as a golden age of film. Still, the average movie today does not compare to the great movies of the past.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia, the tendency to remember the past fondly, is the other factor. The other day, someone told me they missed FoxBASE, a database designed for small projects. They complained about how the newer databases are so much tougher to use and have more bugs. I’ve been working hands-on with software for many decades, including with FoxBASE, and this notion is objectively false. I remember time and time again having to work around sloppy bugs in commercial software, a ubiquitous experience for me early in my career and almost unknown now. This is because software is of much higher quality than it used to be. Moreover, most software now focuses on easing the user experience, so massive manuals and training are no longer needed. Gone are the days of having to have a thick book by your side to guide you through using software.

One major factor in software quality improvement is changes in how software is developed. It used to be developed like a skyscraper is built, with massive amounts of blueprints and detailed plans. This was done because when computers were first built changing software was a huge undertaking. Using punch cards or magnetic tape, changing lines of code was a risky and time-intensive endeavor. It was important to do it once and do it right. Getting bug fixes out to customers meant shipping disks, magnetic tapes, or punch cards in the mail. Customers then had to install the fixes, often encountering new problems.

Contrast that to today when almost all software has access to the internet and can be updated constantly. Any bugs can be fixed in minutes instead of months. Therefore, the software universe has shifted ever more towards Continuous Delivery which takes advantage of the ability to quickly build and fix code.

Another example of nostalgia is when a friend of mine talked about her 1970 Plymouth and what an amazing car it was. I’m not a car buff, nor was I old enough in the 1970’s to notice what cars were around, but she was very enthused by the car. She talked at length about how the car reached 100,000 miles and they had champagne to celebrate. To this day, she sees the 100,000-mile milestone as a great achievement, and I think it was.

A car made today, however, that only made it to 100,000 miles would be viewed as having gone to an early grave. Government statistics show the average car today lasts from 200,000 to 300,000 miles. Cars last far longer than they used to, but people often don’t realize it.

Conclusion

In short, it’s true that they don’t make them like they used to — they make them much, much better than they used to. We tend to compare the very best from the old days to the average of today and then we throw in some nostalgia to further tip the scales towards thinking things are worse when they are actually getting better. A lot better.

This is true in many aspects of life. I sit here in the air-conditioning (ubiquitous now, but a rare luxury in houses when I was growing up), typing this blog post on a laptop wirelessly connected to the entire world via the internet. When I was young, not even the ultra-rich had these luxuries. Even the computers and telephones we had back then were markedly inferior compare to today. They were attached by wires to the wall and the telephone sound quality was often poor.

While our age certainly has its challenges and problems, in many ways we live in a golden age no country has known before. Yet, like with pendulum theory, we often focus on what we lack rather than what we have. This is made worse by nostalgia and survivor bias where we think that the wonderful things from the bygone eras that have survived are representative of all things, and not just the best of the best from the past.

We need to be aware that this is happening and remind ourselves that the present has quite a lot going for it. We should be happy that they don’t make things like they used to and that we can enjoy how much better they are made now.