NIST Estimates Sloppy Coding Costs $60 Billion/Year

An anonymous reader submits: "Computerworld is reporting on a government study just released that software bugs are costing the U.S. economy an estimated $59.5 billion each year, with more than half of the cost borne by end users and the remainder by developers and vendors. Better testing could allegedly cut that by one-third."

Comments

More useless statistics

[joebp]

$60BN huh? How did they arrive at this figure? Travel to an alternate dimension where all software works perfectly and compare company's pocketbooks?

Please.

This is much like the rather PR-centric announcements from virus experts that ${VIRUS} caused $${LARGE_AMOUNT}. It's just an estimate, and without an example of an economy with perfect software, it's rather useless.

Yes, people need to strive to create more robust software, but throwing large numbers around tends to blur the issue, in my opinion.

It would be an interesting article if they proposed a system whereby companies are required to reimburse their customers if the software they buy turns out to be a buggy POS.

I could make a living buying second-hand copies of Windows ME and getting refunds from MS :)

Re:Obvious joke

[stuuf]

I think it cost $6 before windows Me came along