>>>Do I think it is possible to produce zero-bug software? Yes, I do,
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>>I disagree, and so does the rest of the professional software testing industry. You can hit a piece of code 10K times, and it may be the 10K+1th time that it fails. You can do code coverage and think that a piece of code is unreachable, but your customer will find a permutation that reachs that code. In a complex system, there are enough possible permutations that you could spend a lifetime testing it.
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>Isn't that the truth bro! Well said.
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>I have a web app (VFP + Web Connect) running for 3 years. Suddenly, this week a user complaints that "the app broke". It was downloading reports in PDF and XLS format to the client fine. Now it wants to download HTML only. What changed? They upgraded their browser from IE 5.5 to IE 5.5 with a much later build. Sheesh!
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>(Assuming you know the answer - and I love to find a fix for this - don't answer here as it does not belong in this thread. I'll post a new message elsewhere. This was just for illustration).

Well I'm still betting that defect-free software will be the standard in our lifetime.
Your defect above (glad you found it) is an example. Average Joes (not a developer like you with users who you support) will have critical information flowing to/fro and simply will not put up with this kind of occurrence when livelihoods/profits/reputations are dependent on computers.

Keep in mind that MS is always pushing people to use the next latest and greatest of everything they make. As well, MS is always looking to get more and more folk dependent on computers and the net (so, by extension, themselves (MS)). Now when a simple update of an installed product breaks things, people become hesitant to update generally. This is almost as bad for MS as Linux is. The solution is to make sure this cannot happen, regardless of what's upgraded or when. [one key way I think MS will 'solve' this is to drastically reduce the number of independently updateable parts].

2-bits worth

JimN