[tikhonj]

This is a narrow view of what software is supposed to do. Are styrofoam cups inferior or are their designers "incompetent" because they break easily? No! That's the whole point--they are cheap and disposable.

The same is true about most software people write--it is also cheap and disposable. Often, having something that works well enough now is better than having something that works well tomorrow. I'm not even talking about being impervious to skilled hackers; even breaking under normal use is not necessarily bad.

Sure, if your software would kill people or destroy things, you have an issue. If your software is very critical and usually above suspicion (like a compiler, say) this would also be a problem. But if you're just writing a web app to share cat pictures or some internal tools or really most any other type of software? It's most often better to be cheap and fragile than good and solid.

My laptop is probably my single most important possession. (Yeah, I'm a student so I don't really have much else :P.) Do I have a Tough Book which is nigh unbreakable? Nope. I have a laptop which is actually fairly easy to mess up. And it is in every practical sense the better choice.

This is, coincidentally, why I think the cynical view of "planned obsolescence" is somewhat shortsighted. Sure, in a sense it's bad that electronic gadgets fall apart after a couple of years. But there's no cynical force behind all this: the simple fact that you wouldn't pay twice as much for a phone which is only more sturdy--but not more capable--is what drives the markets. If you were really worried about it, you would have bought a purpose-built device that would hold up better; instead you bought something cheaper which will break sooner. And this is a perfectly reasonable compromise to make!

[smartkids]

Toughbook is hardware not software. Get an old Thinkpad. It's durable.

I take the opposite view. I like durable software. And that's how I build my systems. If they get trashed, they can be restored in minutes. I'd rather spend my effort preparing simple durable systems that can be restored easily than building complex, fragile systems that would be difficult to reconstruct if something goes wrong. I've heard that sometimes things can go wrong.