> This is obviously not the intent. The intent is to have software that > is reasonably crafted by software engineers. Not some slapped together > turd with peanuts from different development teams.
I agree it shouldn't be slapped together but you strike upon an interesting debate... Should developers have to be software engineers and be certified? Or are we OK with the "hacker" model? I hope you realize I'm not insinuating "hacker" means crap coder! I tend to think it's a superior model but it's also an evolutionary one, something most people don't "have time for." > Not interesting and not even true. Anyone who coded in the old world > with lets say threads, knew that going to a newer better faster machine > would always result in nice new racing bugs. I won't get into why this > happened though. > Sure, doing things faster doesn't mean it'll be better. Often it just means you'll hit a lock problem quicker than if you went slower. Can you elaborate on what you mean though...what's the equivalent to code rust? API breakage? Windows seems to have maintained crazy backwards compatibility. Not that I'm applauding it because it also means malicious can still run unless other means are leveraged to block it. > Reasonable quality control is something people shouldn't hope for it > should be something people demand. The reason why we have windows the > way it is today is that in the early days people didn't put their foot > down and said "ENOUGH". The rest is history. > I agree that's part of the reason. > The reason why Apple is making such big strides with OSX is because they > are capitalizing on this general feeling. OSX unlike windows isn't > naturally chaotic and Apple does a fine job pretending they are secure. > All in all a pretty smart marketing campaign that seems to be paying the > bills just fine. Yes, until the other shoe drops. > Your car runs hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of lines of code. > Does it crash all the time? Microsoft spends more money on R&D than > NASA has to develop a rocket. Are you sure that they should not have > been capable of any standard of quality? Not all the time, but there are many documented cases, not the least of which being the current "popular hybrid car maker" debacle. I've looked up a couple of reports on money spent specifically to improve quality for Microsoft and for NASA. NASA gives us a number at http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_201_%20Budget_Overview_1_Feb_2010.pdfbut the number I found was specific to a group within NASA not as a whole. If you also count the Air Force space program which is much bigger but is also "involved" with NASA, the number becomes much larger: http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100201-050.pdf. Most of the information I found in Microsoft's filing and various news media articles doesn't talk about specific research for "quality improvements." They talk about "vague" concepts. I do believe they're all capable of better quality software, it's just hard and expensive. Each are avoided like the plague in most corporate environments.
