>Everyone has a different “take” on any given subject. Take the title:
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>“Study: Buggy software costs users, vendors nearly $60B annually”
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>
>http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/itspending/story/0,10801,72245,00.html
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>As a developer I look at this as an opportunity. A great deal of my income has been due to buggy software created by others. I thank all the developers that have assisted me during the past 12 years to be able to support my family and myself with code that did not work. Your approach to software development has been a blessing to me. Please keep up the good work which is of great assistance to other developers including myself.

The first thing I thought was an alternate (although, wordier) title: " Study: Buggy software costs users, vendors nearly $60B annually; not having the software at all would cost $110B. Buggy software SAVES companies $50B a year." ;-)

Seriously, though, studies like this kind of bother me. The general fact of the matter is, people are willing to settle for less than perfect (i.e. "buggy") software, because it saves them time and/or money. If it didn't, they wouldn't use it. As much as people would like to have "perfect/bug free" software, they're generally not willing to pay for it, either financially, or in the extra time it would take to develop. What they generally want is software that is "good enough".

At one of the places I used to work, the owner would often request macros, reports (web and desktop), enhancements, changes, etc. be made to one of the various apps we had running. I would code something up, do some really simple checking on it (or in the case of reports, run a few other reports to make sure things balanced), then give him the opportunity to use it the same afternoon. I had specifically asked him (at one point when he wanted something immediately) if he'd like me to do more testing on it, and other software, before letting him know it was available. His answer was "No." He was willing to put up with the occasional bugs that usually popped up because getting the change made NOW was more important to him. He wanted the "good enough" version sooner, rather than the "less buggy" version later.

OK, enough typing for now...