This attitude is based on a pretty common myth. The bottom line is, as with
everything including the K2, there's a trade off between price, quality and
time to market. Microsoft's genius is in getting the balance right.
You want perfect software - sure that's possible - NASA manage it, but at a
price far in excess of what people are willing to pay for a word processor
or other non-critical software.
As to flow charts - modern software is far too complex, flow charts simply
would not help. There are modern equivalents that are more appropriate (eg
sequence diagrams) but using them a) requires more skill and therefore is
more expensive and b) takes more time and is therefore more costly as well.
And the bottom line is most people aren't willing to pay.
What few people appreciate is just how complex modern software is - I would
go as far as saying there is no other human endeavour that is as complex.
Edward
On 13/6/03 6:51 pm, "Stuart Rohre" <rohre@arlut.utexas.edu> wrote:
> Sad to say, I know of no software that comes to the user bug-free. My
> soapbox on this is it all started with programmers abandoning flow charting,
> which at least forces the programmer to look at his code and where it goes
> before it is released.
>
> Sad to say, I doubt if you can find coding sheets on the market.
> Look at the Microsoft products---the software users willingly pay for inept
> and bug laden operating systems, and thus there is little incentive for
> software vending to do any better than the biggest vendor of them all.
> 73,
> Stuart K5KVH
>
>
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