Yet Another Software Sucks Article

Narril Duskwalker writes "This one's from cNet.
`There's only one problem with software development these days, according to security analyst and author Gary McGraw: It isn't any good.'"

Comments

Re:Wrong Problem.

[ameoba]

Not quite... more like features that aren't needed keep getting added so that, instead of fixing the current version, the version number can be incremented and customers can be charged for upgrading to a newer version.

We can blame Microsoft for this sick state of affairs. Until they came along, it was SOP for software licenses to essentially rent the software to the user, giving the author a stable revenue stream. Then Microsoft comes along, and realizes that to sell software for microcomputers, for a number of reasons (lack of hardware support, lack of user interest, non-commercial nature of licencees) a different licencing paradigm was called for, so they went with something more like books.

The catch is, books are generally heavily proofread, but once they've been printed, your stuck. Normally this isn't so bad, since most books work just fine w/ a few typos. Not so with computer programs, a single typo going unnoticed durring testing could be a fatal flaw for software.

Unfortunately, the book model provides no significant incentive to fix released software. Sure, the major showstopper bugs will get patched if they escape testing, but most of the minor glitches and irritations will be left in until the next release, when the product can again be sold for a profit.

The real kicker is that the market for new systems is slowing, and with it the market for new softwar, and consumers are tiring of having to pay to upgrade to properly working software, but the last 20yr of paying once for software has lead them away from acceptance of subscription-style payments, putting software houses in quite a bind...

So, if the consumer was able to accept a payment model that didn't reward the perpetual ignore-bugs/add-features/realease-new-version cycle, we might have non-bloated, functional software.

Personally, I give it another 20yr, before the general populace has enough common sense about computers to force vendors to do the Right Thing.

Try DeMarco's take on it...

[MeerCat]

OK, so the article is about coding for security, but it's worth considering Tom DeMarco's line in his excellent book Why Does Software Cost So Much ? where, he says, the correct answer is "Compared to what ??".

Kicking those who manage complexity is always going to be easy - but until you can do better then you're not really helping.

The book is well worth a read... if only to shut up all those metrics freaks...

T