I would be willing to live and let live for the sake of being practical, if the tolerance for (and even active drive towards) low quality slop didn't keep pushing further and further into places it shouldn't. People that accept it in sloppy web dev will accept it in fairly important line of business software. People that accept it in fairly important line of business software will accept it in IT infrastructure. People that accept it in IT infrastructure will accept it in non-trivial security software. People that accept it in non-trivial security software will accept it in what should be a high-integrity system, at which point real engineers or regulatory bodies hopefully step in to stop the bullshit. When asked, everybody will say they draw the line at security, but the drive towards Worse knows no bounds. It's why we see constant rookie mistakes in every IoT device imaginable.

My actual idealistic position, discounting the practicality, is that it shouldn't be tolerated anywhere. We should be trying to minimize the amount of cheap, born-to-die, plasticy shit in society, not maximize it. Most people going on about "muh feature velocity" are reinventing software that has existed for decades. The next shitty UI refresh for Android or Windows, or bad firmware update for whatever device is being screwed up for me, will leave me just as unhappy as the last. The sprint was indeed completed on time, but the product still sucks.

A guided missile should obviously not miss its target. An airliner should obviously never crash. An ERP system should obviously never screw up accounting, inventory, etc, although many people will tolerate that to an unreasonable degree. But my contention is that a phone or desktop's UI should never fail to function as described. A "smart" speaker should never fail to turn on or be controlled. A child's toy should never fail to work in the circumstances they would play with it.

If it's going to constantly fuck up and leave me unhappy and frustrated, why was it made? Why did I buy it? AI could have brought it to market faster, but for what? Once I noticed this, I did just quit buying/dealing with this junk. I'm an ideologue and maybe even a luddite, but I just don't need that bad juju on my soul. I use and write software that's worth caring about.