>No.. I was attempting to point out that there are a couple of fundamentally different approaches to the process. I happen to think that those who think in terms of tradeoffs are more realistic in the sense of having their expectations line up with what really happens.

Ah, okay. I think we're heading in the same direction, just different roads. I was taking the analogy more along the lines of the software development process as a whole, and the players involved. Though I think competent professional devs think about trade-offs, too, I think a professional tester is more likely to be in tune with the trade-offs involved. This due to the fact that the tester has to ask, "okay, now what did the devs break?"

>By brining this to the table I hope to help folks understand that the issue isn't MSFT or the VFP dev team but the thinking process of those who are ultimately fighting a failing battle to get MSFT to react in a manner that doesn't reflect the reality of life.

Yup, I wasn't speaking specifically of Microsoft, I was just using the VFP product as an example. In reading the software QA journals, it would seem trade-offs are what the state of the art has to deal with.