This one will be short(-ish). It’s just a thought that occurs to me every time I’m on a cell phone call and the call drops, or every time some one leaves me a voice message and it takes 3 days to show up on my phone, or a text message that was sent yesterday finally comes in.
I can send an email from a customer’s phone over to my own, and it can take anything between a minute to 3 days to arrive. By which time it’s utterly useless to me.
Or every time an “update” is forced on me and that update makes something less usable (“new and improved” rarely is either one) or resets my personal settings, which is a total, absolute, irrefutable No-No!
And so on. So, what is it that occurs to me at these times?
One: The Big Difference between Me and a Mainstream Corporation(1) is that if *I* put out a product that works as badly as cell phones do, I’d get sued, or at least end up out of business before long. The Big Corporations, on the other hand, actually use “fewer drop outs” as a bargaining chip in their advertising, there by “educating” the Herd that drop outs are OK, substituting Herd Manipulation for Quality.
As a long time software engineer, let me tell you Authoritatively that all the above points of irritation mentioned (and many others besides) are not acceptable, are 100% preventable, if you leave the Software Engineers alone to do their job.
Two: And this is the Other Difference Between Me and a Major Mainstream Corporation: *I* wouldn’t ship a product that works so poorly. I wouldn’t ship anything until it’s working correctly(2).
Same goes many times over for a Certain Major Computer Operating System used by billions upon billions of computers and devices the world over. It’s way too important to merely ship because it’s time in the Stock Returns Cycle, yet that’s exactly what they do. No! No, you ship it when it’s as close to perfect as is Humanly Possible, and just a little bit more. (Which Windows 10 & 11 are nowhere even close to(3), though XP was dang close to that in quality and reliability. They are insults. They occupy an utterly critical place in the world’s infrastructure today, yet are too often unreliable, unpredictable.)
Thus, The Difference Between Me and a Major, Mainstream Corporation(4).
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(1) I say “mainstream” corporation to differentiate from the few that actually do deliver quality first and profits second, the few that actually serve the customer first and the stock holder second, or perhaps don’t even have stock holders, as many have discovered that the moment you have stock holders you lose control of where “the ship is headed.” Suddenly the Stock Holders — bless their little black flabby hearts — are at the Navigation Station and have locked you out.
(2) In fact, that was the rule during the glory days of the computer industry. Many a company, when still lead by its visionary founders, was heard to say (as I in fact heard them say) “We will ship no software before its time.” [Take off from a popular wine commercial at the time.] Then the CEO types came in as the 90’s unfolded and the ordinary, substandard (for the computer industry), corporate mentality took over instead. The computer industry has been running on inertia ever since, and gradually losing altitude. You can’t make software the same way you make buttons; it doesn’t work. And be glad they don’t make buttons as badly as they make software!
Now, to be fair, it is also true that all software has bugs. It is also true that it is literally impossible to prove even a single line of software coding to be Bug Free (under our current hardware technology; different technology would make that possible). However, that’s no excuse for doing anything less than the best that can be done.
(3) I feel sorry for the core programmers at Microsoft. Morale in software development must be insufferably low. That’s what happens when a craftsman is not allowed to do the best he possibly can. The few contacts I have there suggest that is, in fact, the case, too.
(4) There’s a lot more that could be said here, such as: when you put quality first, you and your company are on an upward track for growth and success, and your customers will benefit — which is the ONLY purpose of a company. Or the primary one, at least. When you put profit first — and forget your duty and purpose to serve the customer — you are on a downward spiral that will require increasing manipulation of your customer base to keep the profits “going up,” that is, abuse of the customer-manufacturer contract. This is ultimately unstable and is why long-time successful companies “suddenly” find themselves replaced one day. Given the decades-long track record for some of these companies, if the published returns were adjusted for inflation against the time of their founding, one would find a very different curve. I mean, money in 1980, say, was worth quite a bit more than it is today (look up “inflation calculator” in your favorite search engine: $1 in 1980 == $3.37 in 2021). So a company shows an increase in sales for the 900th quarter in a row. Adjusted? Or is inflation hidden in those numbers? Are you lying to your stock holders as well as to your customers? That’s a late stage in the evolution of a Mainstream Corporation, marking it as very close to the end of its journey.