[ken]

SQLite is not typical software. It has over 90 million lines of test code, and is run in production every day by pretty much every computer in the world.

mkdir(1) is also not typical. Excluding the copyright header comment, it's so short that it fits entirely on one screen. If I ran into a bug, I could probably find it and fix it (or write my own version) in about 3 minutes.

It is indeed possible to "create software that is so close to perfect that hardware failures outnumber software failures 100:1", but it's so time-consuming that almost nobody ever does it.

Version 1.0.1 of a free mind-mapping app may be good and useful software, but I can virtually guarantee it has bugs. I doubt even the author would claim it's only at 1.0.1 because "there is no point in pursuing perfection any further".

[gizmo]

I agree that sqlite's quality is unusually high. That's why I used it as an example of what kind of quality is achievable.

However, I think you're approaching this from the wrong way. The most important thing about sqlite isn't the amount of manhours put into it, but the millions upon millions of manhours that have been saved because the product works so unbelievably well.

sqlite is the exception, and this is because the people involved in it really care about quality. Our software engineering culture has a lot to learn from the success of sqlite.

[cesarb]

> mkdir(1) [...] it's so short that it fits entirely on one screen.

296 lines in the main .c file, without counting the headers and helper functions: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/mkd...

[carbocation]

And, entertainingly, it contains a FIXME! https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/mkd...