|
These two issues are caused by very different mechanisms. Unlike the flight hours issue, software developers don't have to work to keep up their "license" - in fact, in my experience, most software developers would prefer to take months perfecting everything they build. The reason low-quality software gets shipped is either: - that's what's actually needed in the situation. This has been said on HN plenty of times before in the context of everything from software to house building, but if you know what you build is going to be used for a limited period of time, and then the requirements are going to either change or be better understood and you're going to have to change what you've built, why spend months or years building it perfectly the first time? The core algorithm behind Google's search, or Facebook's timeline are well-crafted, beautiful, pragmatic examples of software excellence [at least from all externally available evidence] but they didn't become so by being shipped as perfect first time - PageRank, although lauded, is almost comically simplistic in comparison with the problem space that Google addresses now. - the client can't tell the difference. In a world where everything is an app, clients are becoming less and less technical. When all computers could do was handle spreadsheets and crunch numbers, anyone who wanted software built was a technologist, or a scientist, or an economist. Now every field needs software, so people from every walk of life are software clients, and the level of ability to differentiate between good (maintainable, extensible, reliable) and bad software that you can reasonable expect from them has plummeted. Meta: is there a rule that says how many responses a HN post can get before it descends into a discussion about software development? |