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Replying To:
Customers are right to expect software to work[ Parent ] (none / 0) (#17)
by Anonymous User on Wed Jul 16, 2008 at 11:09:54 AM PDT

Ummm... as a software developer I'm of the opinion that software really should just work, just like cars should turn when you turn the steering wheel, and a bowl of soup in a restaurant should not contain a fly.

But in the real world, bugs happen, cars are sometimes defective, and flies do occaisionally land in bowls of soup.  The important things are (a) to make rapid and effective restitution to the customer, whether this means a work-around or a patch release, a new car or a fresh bowl of soup and a complimentary bottle of wine.  And (b) to improve the processes that allowed the bug to slip through in the first place.

YES bugs will happen, but as soon as we say "well that's just the way it is" and accept the existance of bugs we're on a downward slope.  And the responsibility doesn't fall entirely on the guy who wrote the code.  Certainly a company the size of Microsoft should have a large QA department, testing not just Windows itself but how Windows interacts with other major software packages - and ZoneAlarm certainly qualifies as one of them.  The objective should be for code released to end-users to be bug-free...  an unachievable objective, maybe, it should be the target nonetheless!

[ Parent ]



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