Software: the truth hurts.....

[Sasq]

Problem is competition - or lack thereof.

During the '80's and Japans exapnsion into many markets, they were fighting against the perception of Japanese made goods being of poor quality.

So they went the extra mile to make sure their products were good, and - it still exists to today - company employees took ownership of the work.

For example they guy who pioneered plasma screens, after the project was originally canned he spent I think close to 2000 hours of his own time, working after work to see the project go through. Now he is almost a national hero.

For what anyone says about the commercial viability of GPL software, one thing can be said, the vast number of projects are done well, and bugs fixed not for financial gain, but because the author has pride in their work. (keeping in mind that some GPL apps are absolute crud as well).

The key point is the employees need to take ownership of the work, however sadly with current corporate mentality, most of us don't feel the need (and usually justifyably so) to put the work in.

So in my opinion what is needed is both a top down and bottom up approach. Employees need to be more willing to go the extra mile, run that extra test, double check things, and Management needs to 1) take better care of the employees 2) reward the hard work and dedication with something other then a pink slip and a nickle palted $10 watch.

Dan

[DukeP]

I cant agree more, Dan.

But users should play their part as well. Most of us is living in a kapitalistic society.
We should learn to "vote with our feet" and stop buying software that we know is less than stellar - and instead invested a bit more time in finding software that both works and fits our needs.

I belive the time spent looking for alternative software, can be time saved when using it.

~~DukeP~~

[KvHagedorn]

Ironically enough, I remember when I was a little kid and asked why communism was bad, I was told that if you wanted a pair of shoes every shoe would be the same, and be of poor quality. Well, guess what? Now that we supposedly don't have communism anymore, the FTC is allowing companies to grow and merge into monopolies, which is causing this same problem. Software, in the form of Microsoft, is just one of these manifestations. So is capitalism now bad?

The answer is that people without character or honor are bad. It isn't communism or capitalism or whatever.. "Isms" are just a bunch of crap that college students use in their sophomoric mental masturbation sessions when they are too lazy to actually think for themselves.

[Gurm]

But the problem also exists with marketing.

"We must ship on July 12."

Doesn't matter if there's NO WAY to get it done before August. It WILL ship on July 12. That's the way things are now - so try to get it pared down to "bugs that don't format the hard disk" before that date.

Gpar_

[High_Jumbllama]

This is so very true. What's worse is there are companies that ship and they know it can trash the drive/OS.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes it is very true, and it will be a problem with a beta I'm deep into right now. HATE it when they lay down an unrealistic timetable

Dr. Mordrid

[The PIT]

Well when you let marketing run a company the company will eventually produce crap.
It would help it marketing people knew how a product was created, worked and fully understood the technical aspects of the product.

[High_Jumbllama]

I use to take advantage of these rushed testing projects and make sure I was on them to get the extra hours. I was so irritatingly methodical that most people were happy to have me on their products. I had a checklist for a word game that was 17 pages long for just the interface and I added helpers in other languages for four other languages. Half the project group loved me for it and the other half hated me for it.

[stcynic]

High_J:

In all the companies I have worked at you would have gotten reprimanded for wasting time. Seriously, I have friends in QA who get in trouble for being too thorough all the time.

While in some cases too much testing may legitimately be overkill, I feel in most cases the research into the cost of poor quality (have not heard that one in a while have you) bears out the need for thorough testing and validation. And the testing and validation should start in the requirements gathering phase.

My personal experience bears this out as well. At my last company we always met or deadlines (a good thing) but also spent twice as much labor after the deadline fixing problems. Not efficient IMHO.

[Nowhere]

KvHagedorn, I'm curious, seriously you were fed by something like that about eastern block?

and about subject...hmmm, I think it's little different here than what you describe. Not necasirily better (perhaps worse ), but different...
Must be something about young capitalism.

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Nowhere
KvHagedorn, I'm curious, seriously you were fed by something like that about eastern block?

I think that was in reference to the Chinese in their identical Mao suits.

and about subject...hmmm, I think it's little different here than what you describe. Not necasirily better (perhaps worse ), but different...
Must be something about young capitalism.

Maybe something about the Russian mafia?

[Nowhere]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
...
Maybe something about the Russian mafia?

Blah, that's for granted

But something about...different quality control (which doesn't mean better thing) and that usually marketing people don't drive the damn thing I guess (it happens that there's virtually no such thing as marketing department ). On the other hand...how many applications etc. from here have you seen? (even if they are up there, they won't advertise from where they're coming for sure...and actually I can think about one such thing - rather widely used models of set top boxes (the decoding-digital-signal kind))

[High_Jumbllama]

Originally posted by stcynic
High_J:

In all the companies I have worked at you would have gotten reprimanded for wasting time. Seriously, I have friends in QA who get in trouble for being too thorough all the time.

While in some cases too much testing may legitimately be overkill, I feel in most cases the research into the cost of poor quality (have not heard that one in a while have you) bears out the need for thorough testing and validation. And the testing and validation should start in the requirements gathering phase.

My personal experience bears this out as well. At my last company we always met or deadlines (a good thing) but also spent twice as much labor after the deadline fixing problems. Not efficient IMHO.

I could be fast and detailed too but when they gave me the time I would get excessively thorough. Of course this was not possible with shorter term testing/version cycles, but it happened often enough. Imagine testing every type and direction each chess piece can move. Some projects stayed with us for four plus months and we were outsourced testing. One basically had the understanding that if you wanted overtime you got it. You just had to make sure with the test leads. It always was OK.