• Ok, sure, you're totally right: in my dream world everithing would function as you described in your editorial.

    But from my personal perspective of 'one man army' independent developer (recently two man army as I took up an apprentice 😉 )the biggest issue remains this: my customers for the most part do not know what they want from custom made software BUT they want it really fast.

    In the last years I developed quite a good skill at mind reading but it is not always enough, moreover about 60% of times when I propose a certain approach to a problem it is rejected only to be reconsidered and approved when the project is nearing completion and this mean rushing to re-write tons of code in no time.

    The sad thing is (from my point of view) that if you enter in the equation the little fact that at the end of the day you have to eat something to keep going on and to eat you must have money to pay for your food... well you certainly see where this is going don't you?

    I really don' t know how it is in the US but here in Italy, for a whole lot of hystorical reasons, the people who will use the software simply seem not to trust enough the people who design and write it, every minor change to the routine procedures of how thing are made seems at first like a Copernican revolution to the users and I think this is the real issue that lurks at the bottom of the software quality problem.

    It' not all dark: during the last decade things have improved a bit but I fear we will have to wait another decade before users and customers evolve to a point where they can begin to talk seriously with us about designing and planning of the applications we are going to write for them.