Although I agree with most of your points, I still think that part of the problem is in the market itself. People wants cheap software, even if that means lower quality.

I agree with you, it is unprofessional to release software with so many bugs. Yet, when it comes to reality, you either release your software or your client will find another provider (even if that provider means less quality than you. )

In fact, that's the way most of the market is moving (not only software.) Look at cars, stereos, houses. People was used to like things that last for a lifetime. Not so anymore.





>There have been several UT threads discussing bug-reporting and bug-fixing. This has pushed my button. :-)
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>I’ve been in the programming business one way or another for a very long time, and I have seen a lot of changes in programming. Overall, I have been excited by the changes I’ve seen. We really have made remarkable advances from binary machine coding to OOP!
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>However, the one thing that bothers me that I can’t get used to is the increase in bugginess of programs, from operating systems to applications. There is no doubt in my mind that in the earlier days of software development, I would have been summarily fired if I had released software with the high density of programming bugs that one finds today. Of course, large programs will always have bugs, no matter how much debugging effort is spent, and the problem is compounded by size of programs today that dwarfs programs of the past. But, really, how many bugs are tolerable? I haven’t been using VFP very long, and certainly haven’t pushed it to the limits as some of you have done, but it does fail almost daily (or is it the OS?).
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>I remember times when there were entire departments established for the sole purpose of discovering errors in programs (and databases) – where did these go? I remember whenever any kind of bug was discovered, the development team jumped on it immediately and worked until it was fixed – no matter how important or trivial the bug was. I never heard the attitude, “It’s a small bug, and there is a work-around, so don’t worry about it.” When did these changes occur? I never heard of using the general public for ‘beta’ testing; when did this start and why?
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>Is it that consumers would rather have the latest application with more bells and whistles (and some good features) – and bugs -- than an older, dated system that is rock-solid?
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>Is it that competition is so fierce that a manufacturer needs to release a new application version so that the competitors won’t beat them to the punch?
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>Tracy Holzer, on a different thread, said, ”That does not make it okay to have to purchase the next version in order to fix 'bugs' in the current version. Bugs should be fixed and provided free-of-charge for all customers that invested in the current version. Enhancements are expected in new versions.” I agree wholeheartedly with this. But Craig Bernston replied, “Can you name one major software company that works this way?” Well, I can’t think of one. But it does prove my point, doesn’t it – there is a very different attitude nowadays about the value of correcting software bugs. My guess is that it’s not programmers who have this attitude, but the business managers of the software companies.
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>Ok, that’s my beef. I have learned to live with this situation, even though I can’t bring myself to like it. Otherwise, the current state of programming is great!
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>I would be very interested in hearing the perspectives from all of you professionals.