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>> If you hire a maid who always manages to miss a spot or two cleaning your bathroom, does it really matter? It depends on the spot missed: is it contaminated

>> If you hire a maid who always manages to miss a spot or two cleaning your bathroom, does it really matter? It depends on the spot missed: is it contaminated with fecal matter? There you get into the realm of risk management. The problem is that, with software, one bad mistake can leave the user with complete loss of data. Look at Microsoft's recent update debacle; some people lost a great deal of data. >> Namely, is crappy software actually more efficient? Never. As the Chinese expression goes: Pay a lot, cry once. The problem is that the people who pay for the creation of software (i.e. corporate directors) are usually ignorant about all things except for money and the vague desires of their customers. The folks that can specify and implement the systems rarely have the clout to allocate the resources necessary to get the job done well. >> Which one of these two things is software more like? Information systems (software that must run over and over again against the same data, often concurrently) are actually engines in that they must withstand stopping and starting; of course, the information engines that run continuously are even more difficult to keep functioning as their uptime stretches on. Therefore, the answer to your question is that software is most certainly more like an engine because information systems are engines, just that their fuel is data (including user input) and their output is information (data made meaningful to human beings) and changes to its information base. We can all see how the poorly designed information engines of the world accrue ugly cruft that eventually leads to their needing to be "re-built", which, for example for Windows, means re-installing from scratch.

adrianmonk 7y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I feel like our industry is in two camps right now, one that firmly believes quality always pays off and one which believes it is more of a luxury. Unfortunately, I don't see either side backing it up with anything that looks like real evidence. It's so complicated to evaluate that I don't think anyone really can prove either way. But you can't not have an opinion since it's an important question, so it seems like people join one camp or the other mostly because it suits their personality or working style. If they take pride in their work and feel disappointment at the prospect of producing code they can't be proud of, they tend to believe quality is worth it in the end. If they are impatient and like to wrap up one thing quickly so they can move on to the next thing, they tend to be in the other camp. I myself am in the quality and correctness camp, and I really would love to know that it always pays off because that would mean the way I prefer to develop software is also the most practical and reasonable way. But I can't really prove that it's the right view when you consider the economics.
ljw1001 7y ago
>The problem is that the people who pay for the creation of software (i.e. corporate directors) are usually ignorant about all things except for money and the vague desires of their customers. Oversimplification. Solving a problem just well-enough to live to fight another day is baked into capitalism in a deep way through competition, whether that competition is internal or external. .

adrianmonk 7y ago

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I feel like our industry is in two camps right now, one that firmly believes quality always pays off and one which believes it is more of a luxury. Unfortunately, I don't see either side backing it up with anything that looks like real evidence. It's so complicated to evaluate that I don't think anyone really can prove either way. But you can't not have an opinion since it's an important question, so it seems like people join one camp or the other mostly because it suits their personality or working style. If they take pride in their work and feel disappointment at the prospect of producing code they can't be proud of, they tend to believe quality is worth it in the end. If they are impatient and like to wrap up one thing quickly so they can move on to the next thing, they tend to be in the other camp. I myself am in the quality and correctness camp, and I really would love to know that it always pays off because that would mean the way I prefer to develop software is also the most practical and reasonable way. But I can't really prove that it's the right view when you consider the economics.

ljw1001 7y ago

>The problem is that the people who pay for the creation of software (i.e. corporate directors) are usually ignorant about all things except for money and the vague desires of their customers. Oversimplification. Solving a problem just well-enough to live to fight another day is baked into capitalism in a deep way through competition, whether that competition is internal or external. .