[jaggederest]

I think one of the other problems is that people value the economics of software correctness using their gut, rather than empirical analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting

Everyone knows that bugs are problematic eventually, it just seems that they can't put that on a level playing field with the up front costs, be they in terms of time, features, or effectiveness.

As an example, if you asked Home Depot whether they were saving money with their self checkout machines, I'm sure the answer would be different before their data breach vs after. Even after being warned they simply couldn't properly discount the possibility of massive damage in the future when offered a short term benefit.

[nostrademons]

Hyperbolic discounting is rational when the availability of resources increases exponentially, as it often does for products that catch on.

A company that comes to market with a product that is useful but buggy will attract the attention of venture capitalists & other investors. It will receive user feedback from its existing user base. It will find it easier to hire top talent. It will be able to use collected data to make better products. All of these factors are in proportion to the company's size, which tends to make growth rates exponential.

It's pretty standard practice in the tech industry to bring a buggy, barely-working product to market; use interest in that to raise money; use money to hire engineers; and use the engineers to fix the bugs. You could even look at this as a net benefit to society, as long as existing customers would rather use the product in its buggy, incomplete state than go without it.

[jaggederest]

I see it continue long past the point where 'we needed to ship something to be able to eat next month', to the point where people handicap themselves for the next 5 years in a mature business to release a feature a month faster even though they've got 3 years of runway and ample revenue.

Also, hyperbolic discounting is explicitly not exponential in the way you might account for the future availability of resources (even at a very high exponential rate), it's valuing things on a different curve in the future than the present: would you rather have five dollars today or ten dollars next month, vs would you rather have five dollars a year from now or ten dollars a year and a month from now. People will say five dollars today, but ten dollars a year and a month from now, even though under rational analysis they should come out exactly the same.