That is a very valid point. I just wish there were some way to have our cake and eat it too. If your company is not willing to sacrifice quality in order to be first to market then you better believe some other company will. The truth is that as long as people are willing to pay for shoddy software, then companies will be rushing shoddy software out the door. Seeing as the vast majority of the public has been conditioned that this is the way things are, I'm not too sure how this situation can be improved.
The main reason that most software design sucks is that the engineers are not give enough time to do the project right. The idea is that you just get it out to market and you can always patch it later. Try telling some guy with an MBA whose making all the decisions that it is better to take enough time to do a project properly. All he/she knows is that the "magic black box" will produce the same output whether the design is good enough.
So the same scenario is repeated over and over:
Engineer: "I can get this done in 10 months"
Manager: "Hmmm..... we need to get it done in 6."
Engineer: "That's not enough time to design and implement a clean, extendable, reusable product!"
Manager:(Confused by big words like 'extendable')
"It'll work though right?"
Engineer: "Well yeah, but..."
Manager: "Just get it done in 6 months."
As long as you have people who have no clue about software making deadline decisions, you're gonna have to hack like hell for 60 hours a week just to get it out the door. It's sad but true. Granted this isn't ALWAYS the case but in my experience it is most of the time.
If you want to take the time to do a project cleanly then I think academia is your best bet.
I live in Chicago and just got an SBC ADSL connection because they were the only broadband solution available at the time. Yes the PPPoe situations sucks. Two days after I got my connection, I went to Best Buy, laid out about $120 dollars for a router:
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That is a very valid point. I just wish there were some way to have our cake and eat it too. If your company is not willing to sacrifice quality in order to be first to market then you better believe some other company will. The truth is that as long as people are willing to pay for shoddy software, then companies will be rushing shoddy software out the door. Seeing as the vast majority of the public has been conditioned that this is the way things are, I'm not too sure how this situation can be improved.
The main reason that most software design sucks is that the engineers are not give enough time to do the project right. The idea is that you just get it out to market and you can always patch it later. Try telling some guy with an MBA whose making all the decisions that it is better to take enough time to do a project properly. All he/she knows is that the "magic black box" will produce the same output whether the design is good enough.
So the same scenario is repeated over and over:
Engineer: "I can get this done in 10 months"
Manager: "Hmmm..... we need to get it done in 6."
Engineer: "That's not enough time to design and implement a clean, extendable, reusable product!"
Manager:(Confused by big words like 'extendable')
"It'll work though right?"
Engineer: "Well yeah, but..."
Manager: "Just get it done in 6 months."
As long as you have people who have no clue about software making deadline decisions, you're gonna have to hack like hell for 60 hours a week just to get it out the door. It's sad but true. Granted this isn't ALWAYS the case but in my experience it is most of the time.
If you want to take the time to do a project cleanly then I think academia is your best bet.
I live in Chicago and just got an SBC ADSL connection because they were the only broadband solution available at the time. Yes the PPPoe situations sucks. Two days after I got my connection, I went to Best Buy, laid out about $120 dollars for a router:
& sc at=&e=11008648
http://www.bestbuy.com/Detail.asp?m=488&cat=540
It has all that crap in firmware, and I have enjoyed an always on connection for four separate computers ever since.
Well worth the price, it is a router/switch so it's all you need to buy.