Draft- Why Software Sucks- An Alternate Perspective

Draft: Why Software Sucks: An Alternate Perspective

Last updated: 9/14/2002; 10:16:06 AM

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Draft: Why Software Sucks: An Alternate Perspective

Why Software Sucks: An Alternate Perspective

I've seen all the arguments about why software quality basically sucks – you know the ones: It's hard, Customers demand too much, It changes to fast, We're at an early stage in the evolution of the industry, etc. All of these are true. But you know what? There's another reason too:

It's My Fault.

That's right – it's my fault that software quality sucks green slime. And it's your fault too. How many times have you done this:

Bought software

Used software

Hit bugs

Worked around them

You know what you should have done:

Screamed Bloody Murder at the Vendor

or

Do a Popeye: "I'ze Had All I'ze Can Take and I'ze Can't Take No More"

i.e.

Get the hell out of that software.

I'm sorry – everytime one of us sucks it up and says "Not worth my time to report it" or "They'll just blow me off", etc, the vendor gets a tacit message of "Bugs are ok; Bad design is just fine". That's just wrong – we're into roughly the 50th year of computing now and shouldn't quality be going up, not down? Even if you figure that all computing before PCs didn't matter (a wrong but possible argument), we are into the 25th odd year of PCs dating it from the altair shipping in 76?. I'm sorry people - I used to be a vendor and even back in those days, while I wasn't perfect, my company did a damn good job. And, you know why? Our customers would scream at us if we screwed up. High tech is just like anything else – the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So here's the question:

Have you screamed at a vendor today? If not, should you?

Related:

http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/09/06/1650235

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