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To the poster's credit, he does frame this in terms of balancing concerns. I'd argue the post overstates the non-technical mitigation, but they seem worth being
by dehora 6y ago
To the poster's credit, he does frame this in terms of balancing concerns. I'd argue the post overstates the non-technical mitigation, but they seem worth being aware of, and even as a rhetorical device, overstating helps bring them into focus.
> The deeper question is why is software quality only loosely correlated, if at all, with business outcomes?
Because quality is on a spectrum and context specific: commercial domains need quality levels—you have to set magnitude or quantify in some way. The software profession such as it is, tends to come at this a binary matter (cite pretty much any debate about speed vs quality). That gets, I think, amplified in technical communities where correctness is deemed more important or simply more attainable in terms of claims.
> But the optimist understands that great engineering will leapfrog competitors and leave them in the dust.
I agree with the sentiment; I actually do think we're in a phase where engineering leverage is underestimated, but would qualify it and say this is different to correctness. What great engineering can do is offer a short term technical advantage (eg "secret sauce") and/or a sustainable one (eg "organisational speed"). It's not clear correctness provides that kind of benefit, unless we want to frame as increasing precision/accuracy/reproducibility of results.