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So, none of the reasons that software is mediocre is that developing, and maintaining, great software is actually hard? Instead he claims it's all just due to

by unwind 11y ago

So, none of the reasons that software is mediocre is that developing, and maintaining, great software is actually hard? Instead he claims it's all just due to market (lock-in, free) and management (more people) reasons. That strikes me as being somewhat cynical, but perhaps I'm not reading it right. Personally I think the bar is pretty high for software, since it's all mainstream now it's hard to get by with under-delivering in terms of features, which makes even "simple" things kind of complicated, which often necessitates at least a slightly larger team than before. Having a larger team I think makes quality harder to achieve due to the "committee-factor".

wongarsu 11y ago
Of course building great software is hard. So is building great buildings, or designing great planes, or producing great, internationally sold cereal. The commitee factor is a problem in anything provided internationally to millions of users, as well as in anything sold for hundreed thousands of dollars to single customers. I don't think software is inherently more difficult than other products with comparable scope and scale. If anything, in software it's easier to develop and provide a product with big scope or big scale than in most other fields. In software you can often achieve quality and scale at the same time with a team smaller than the one of your local hardware shop. But I agree with the author that in software, like in some other fields, a lot of the incentives are not aligned to create great software.
- mtbcoder 11y ago
  > The commitee factor is a problem in anything provided internationally to millions of users, as well as in anything sold for hundreed thousands of dollars to single customers. As with anything in life, things are never black and white but filled with grays. For example, I'd much rather my banking software or the avionics of a plane that I am about to board be designed and built by committee rather than the local hotshot cowboy coder who wants to rebuild everything from scratch with whatever happens to be the tech stack-of-the-month. Great software is often boring and un-sexy and not everything can be built by two developers in a bedroom.

by unwind 11y ago

wongarsu 11y ago

Of course building great software is hard. So is building great buildings, or designing great planes, or producing great, internationally sold cereal. The commitee factor is a problem in anything provided internationally to millions of users, as well as in anything sold for hundreed thousands of dollars to single customers. I don't think software is inherently more difficult than other products with comparable scope and scale. If anything, in software it's easier to develop and provide a product with big scope or big scale than in most other fields. In software you can often achieve quality and scale at the same time with a team smaller than the one of your local hardware shop. But I agree with the author that in software, like in some other fields, a lot of the incentives are not aligned to create great software.

mtbcoder 11y ago
> The commitee factor is a problem in anything provided internationally to millions of users, as well as in anything sold for hundreed thousands of dollars to single customers. As with anything in life, things are never black and white but filled with grays. For example, I'd much rather my banking software or the avionics of a plane that I am about to board be designed and built by committee rather than the local hotshot cowboy coder who wants to rebuild everything from scratch with whatever happens to be the tech stack-of-the-month. Great software is often boring and un-sexy and not everything can be built by two developers in a bedroom.