![]() ![]() (This explains how it is possible for Microsoft to release Vista with a straight face.) Furthermore, there is very little any one user can do about it. What I mean is that we have collectively– and rationally– ceased to expect that software normally works well, even under normal conditions. When I say quality is dead, I don’t mean that it’s dying, or that it’s under threat. Meanwhile, user expectations of quality have been beaten out of them. The entropy caused by mindboggling change and innovation in computing has reached a point where it is extremely expensive to use traditional development and testing methods to create reasonably good products and get a reasonable return on investment. This is my Quality is Dead hypothesis: a pleasing level of quality for end users has become too hard to achieve while demand for it has simultaneously evaporated and penalties for not achieving it are weak. ![]() In fact, bright inquisitive testers seem to be frowned upon as troublemakers. The ability of the testers to test means nothing. But that doesn’t matter, because the managers offering them the work care for nothing but the hourly rate of the testers. Offshore companies, almost universally, are unwilling and unable to provide solid evidence of their expertise. One sign of this is the outsourcing trend. But now many of them, especially the biggest ones, have completely given up. My impression is that up to about ten years ago most companies were still trying, in good faith, to put out a good product. And now it feels that way even when I buy a fresh new computer. I feel as if my computer is crawling with maggots. You know it’s dead, too, don’t you? You long ago stopped expecting anything to just work on your desktop, right? Same here. Been dead a while, but like some tech’d up version of Weekend at Bernie’s, software purveyors are dressing up its corpse to make us believe computers can bring us joy and salvation. ![]()
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