Software has a problem.
OK, it has many problems. I’ve already highlighted one of them. But this is another important one.
The problem is that software—all software, with no exceptions—sucks. The reason for this is multifaceted and we could spend years and years arguing about who has the larger list of reasons, but in the end it boils down to the proverbial shoemaker’s children: Our development tools are the worst of the worst in software.
One thing we can all do (users and practitioners both) is STOP ACCEPTING EXCUSES. Buggy software is broken software. Period. Shove this in the practitioners’ faces (and accept that it will be shoved into ours!) and stop standing for it.
One of the reasons we in this industry have gotten into this state is that we’ve convinced the public (and ourselves) that this is normal. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot for so often that we think walking around leaving bloody footprints behind is normal.
And we’re about the only branch of “engineering” (scare quotes because I can count on one hand the number of software makers I think use engineering principles–and I don’t number myself on that hand) that tolerates the kind of cowboy bullshit that is normal. Cowboy civil engineers get sued to perdition and/or jailed when their output is fundamentally broken. When mechanical engineers make broken shit, they go bankrupt from the returns. Yet when software “engineers” product total and absolute shit they get away scot free and, indeed, they often, bizarrely, manage to sell the repairs as “new software”.
Excellent commentary. Excellent use of markdown for emphasis. 5/5