(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
People want software that is cheap, buggy, and first
People reward developers who deliver software that is cheap, buggy, and first. That's because people want fancy new gadgets now. They don't want inconvenience, don't want to learn new ways of interacting with their computers, don't want delays in delivery, and don't want to pay extra for quality (unless it's obvious up front--and often not even then).
Bjarne Stroustrup, The Problem with Programming
Comments on “People want software that is cheap, buggy, and first”:
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I would modify this to be "Marketeers/Sales Folk" want software that is cheap, buggy, and first. If you ask the common person they want something that works without question (high quality) and if you ask the developer they may say something similar.
I wouldn't agree to this modification.
People SAY they want something that works, just like Marketing and Sales will agree that quality is of paramount importance.
That said, 'first' and 'lots of features' tends to get the sales, so software companies respond to the incentive, and build software that way.
People SAY they want something that works, just like Marketing and Sales will agree that quality is of paramount importance.
That said, 'first' and 'lots of features' tends to get the sales, so software companies respond to the incentive, and build software that way.
software sale is a scam.
It hooks the client with 80% features the client wants. It is usually full of functional bugs, performance problems due to design, architecture or maybe just immature code of entry level programmer.
Then once the client buys it, then there is another story of fixing the bug behind the scene, re-architected secretly. In the mean time, give the client some hotfixs for them to dream on.
It hooks the client with 80% features the client wants. It is usually full of functional bugs, performance problems due to design, architecture or maybe just immature code of entry level programmer.
Then once the client buys it, then there is another story of fixing the bug behind the scene, re-architected secretly. In the mean time, give the client some hotfixs for them to dream on.
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