Re: Demand That 'Microsoft Sell No Code Before Its Time'

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"Robert Moir" <robspamtrap+msnews@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>All Things Mopar wrote:

>> Writing software is a business, where the intent is to make
>> money. Testing and fixing bugs costs money that can better be
>> spent on new features. So, compromises are frequently made
>> when quality problems become obvious. Maybe nobody sets out to
>> design bad code, but "management" certainly condones it by
>> making an economic judgement /not/ to fix things that are
>> obviously broken if they at all think they can get away with
>> it. If 100 million users showed up at M$'s HQ in Redmond with
>> their CD in hand demanding a refund, you can bet your ass
>> there'd be some changes made in the debugging process!

>And what would the 100 million users say when the price of Windows changed
>to reflect the costs of the new engineering standards required of it?

When quality briefly became an interest of management a decade or
two ago, many companies were astonished to find out that producing
defect free products was actually CHEAPER than the build-and-fix
model.

While sitting inside a company I watched a project spend more on
trying to patch the product to keep it from sinking than they had
on doing the entire project only a couple of years earlier.

>http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.html

>A very interesting article, but reflect on the differences in the
>engineering philosophy and the costs of applying that to a big project such
>as Windows.

Personal experience on two projects being done for about the same
task by people working inside the same company under the same
schedule pressure with about the same quality software people,
a handful of differences in the "charter" of each group ended
up with close to 100x better software quality by one of the
teams. And the other one, they were the ones who spent the
money trying to keep it from sinking.

>Also we have to accept that the market drives the need for commercial
>shrinkwrap software. You say you want perfection, we all do for sure, and
>yet millions of people buy software that isn't perfect, and being 2nd to
>market with a perfect product while someone with a product that is simply
>"good enough" eats your lunch can kill your company stone dead.

Tell me, brutally honestly, has version X+1 of any software product
out there REALLY given you something you couldn't have likely better
lived without? Who convinced these people that "who cares if the
crap works or not but we MUST throw in a few dozen new features and
ship a new version every year or our company will implode."

>> If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Whether
>> software developers personally, or robber baron bastards like
>> Bill Gates like it or not, there is /never/ an excuse for
>> /knowingly/ producing and selling defective code, nor in
>> charging a fee for trying to get it to work.

>I've _never_ been charged by Apple or Microsoft for a bug fix.

As far as I know everybody else pays for each new bugfix/rewrite
of Windows and MacOS.

>> It /is/ possible
>> to automate regression testing, and it /is/ possible to buy
>> the various hardware and software you purport to support, and
>> test your own code, and testing /does/ uncover bugs.

>You _are_ aware that Microsoft already do this, right?

.

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