chrisn-585491 (9/25/2013)
I wouldn't describe it as complex myself but that is a subjective term.
It's an n=2 problem. Simon has a right to be proud, but not judgmental. Many of us are dealing with n greater than 2 problems.
I doubt his software deals with census demographics, address certification, geocoding, web interfaces, new operating systems, embedded scripting languages and a insanely large number of disparate data formats.
I envy him.
I'm not being judgemental, I just think that the software industry is way behind almost every other industry in terms of quality control, and I think we should be aiming much higher than just "mostly bug-free code".
Would you accept a "mostly fault free" product from any other sector, e.g. a mostly fault free car?
Part of the problem is that many software companies start selling new products before the code is even written. They promise to deliver in unreallistic timescales, and we (the engineers) then have to rush our work, resulting in low quality products.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but to "embrace the idea that code can be wrong" (Nathan Marz) seems like the wrong approach to me. I think we should be aiming to release 100% bug-free code. Requirements may change over time, but we shouldn't be knowingly selling code that contains bugs.
To get past this, I believe we need a culture shift. Way too many people in the software industry think it is normal and acceptable to release products that contain bugs. This is basically fraud, and would not be tolerated in any other industry.