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The problem of software quality is complicated and difficult to reduce to a single set of issues. I don't think anything you've said here contradicts what Seth
by panic 11y ago
The problem of software quality is complicated and difficult to reduce to a single set of issues. I don't think anything you've said here contradicts what Seth wrote.
I think he's right, though, that economics is the fundamental problem. We bang out code quickly to meet deadlines measured in months despite the decades-long impact a poor decision can have (see JavaScript for example). When we find ourselves slowing down, we add more people to write more code; why are we surprised when our software becomes bloated?
But if we missed our deadlines too much, we'd lose the market to our competitor, who wrote their software more quickly. And if we didn't hire more programmers, we'd lose again to our competitor, who hired tons of people to add attractive features.
It seems impossible to write good software without losing in the free market. IMO we should be thinking about how to support software projects outside of market-based corporations.
- taeric 11y agoJavaScript seems an odd choice for an example. Sure, you can look only at the oddities of the language, but you could also look at it as the choice to allow dynamic scripting in web pages. At that level, it has been a hugely enabling choice that I would not label as a poor decision. That is, there is no real evidence that any other choice would have obviously gone better. Why assert it?
- carsongross 11y agoObjecting to his choice seems odd. There is plenty of real evidence that Javascript has many conceptual and implementation issues and is, generally, poorly thought out. That it has redeeming features is not in question, nor an excuse. Why object to it?
- Retric 11y agoA few days by one person was spent on writing v1. Hundreds of years have been lost dealing with poor choices made over those days. That's not to say they did a poor job, just the timeline was crazy.
- taeric 11y agoMy point is you are focused on the losses, with no guarantee that other choices would have had the same gains. Basically, this is an assertion without a valid comparison to back it up. I've become too much of an empiricist in my age.
- Retric 11y agoAt some point it would have been to late or to complex etc. But, an extra week would have more than doubled the time he had to work with. Pretending that's going to give anything close to an optimal solution is silly.
- pjc50 11y agoSee my https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11487318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11487318 on software mutualism.