Stefano Padovan (3/9/2011)
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.
This has also been my experience as well. There was never enough time to do it right from the beginning for the customer, but there was always time enough to spend hours on end fixing it or redoing it. Many government oriented operations, as well as private companies, do business this way on a regular basis. Real world. 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"