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Why (Most) Software is so Bad
Rivard was one of several to point out that
MSNBC
says software sucks.
My opinion is that in software fields where the monetary gap between market-leader and second-place is large, we should expect bad software. Good design, good execution, good debugging all take time, but users can't see under the hood -- and wherever information is scarce or not readily traded among consumers, the free market bogs down. (Note what the article says about McAfee VirusScan.) So companies that don't plan on releasing a crummy 1.0 and fixing it later go under. That's just the way some markets work; if you're a coder or engineer who doesn't like that, find yourself a job in a niche without that monetary gap. Anyway, the really stunning thing is that, of all the media outlets, MSNBC points out that just one of Microsoft's poor design decisions has cost consumers $8.75 billion, and wonders why nobody has
sued.
Update: 06/18 14:10 GMT by J : Readers point out the story is a reprint
from Technology Review
(one of the few good magazines I get -- but this issue hasn't arrived yet :).
Rivard continued his writeup with an interesting point of view, saying that while we all know software sucks, we just accept it:
"Even though 'plenty of reviewers, pundits, hackers and other outsiders' will point out problems, often intentionally left in the product, no one has brought a liability suit against the makers of the known-to-be-vitiated product -- because the software gestapo (the End User License Agreement) has been 'able to avoid product liability litigation partly because software licenses force customers into arbitration' of poorly designed pith."There is a light at the end of the tunnel, believe it or not, and it's Bill Gates. Microsoft suspended coding for two months to seminar on bugs and how to fix them. Gates told his employees he wanted to make 'reliable and secure' software Microsoft's 'highest priority.' If you don't buy Gates' ad-hocking promises of redemption there are other solutions, like creating a programming language that forces good code; going back to the days of intense peer-review, instead of relying on compilers; and intense planning, past the bungling paradigm of the bar napkin."
This article is out of the July/August MIT Technology Review. My copy of the magazine proves their point in an ironic fashion.
./ probably could--isolate the bug in ten minutes given the source. Likely it assumes that either the first city is valid or that the likelihood of two cities beginning with the same two letters in the same zip code is too small to consider.
The zip code I live in covers two cities, let's call them Appleville (tiny village) and Apricotland (large, sprawling concrete wasteland.) I live in Apricotland which is asciibetically second (based on the third letter.) Note that the first two letters are the same. MIT TR's mailing system lists me as living in Appleville. Why would it assume that zip code 12345 is the smaller village instead of the sprawling metropolis?
Yup. Buggy software. I could--as anyone reading
The joke's on you, MIT.
1. Smart (or dumb) guys form startup around good idea. Version 1.0 gets written in a frenzy of caffeine and beer, riddled with bugs because it has to be delivered before the money runs out.
2. Mistakes made in version 1 are sworn off as version 2 is designed. Version 2 is built by the swell of 2nd-generation coders, hired as fast as possible and sent to work unsupervised by the overworked 1st-generation engineers.
3. Version 2 is delivered with all the good ideas on the surface, but implemented by less-than-excellent coders.
4. Widespread adoption funds much additional hiring. Anything vaguely mammalian is hired to fix bugs and work on new features and new products. Most 1st-generation engineers leave with their money. Product design and development is run by people who don't know what they're doing.
The key to the article is the last section, which talks about remedying the bad software situation, describing massive class-action lawsuits as "a bad idea whose time has come." MS knows that it could live through a class-action suit of this type. Would your favorite open-source project survive being sued back into the stone age? I think this article is an attempt to get public opinion stirred up to the point that UCITA laws - which include things like mandated warranties on software products -seem like a reasonable solution, and thus make life more difficult for MS's competition.
Knowing a bit of how mass mailings work, specifically how you figure out who is where through zip codes, the actual city that gets printed on things mailed to you in that fasion is determined by checking the Post office database, usually through a program such as AccuZip.
Lots of times, the city the post office has you in isn't the city you actually live in, but it will get to you all the same, because the Post Office can't assign multiple municipalities to a single zip code. They probably picked the small town because it didn't have any other zip code, or whatever criteria they have. Don't blame the software for something that isn't it's fault. It's just doing a query based on the official database.
6. Fixing even the shallow defects would break backwards compatibility and the customers all swear they will go to your competitors.