Hi Jim,

Like the author, I'm also trying to figure out the cause of bad software. In the house - software anology:

1. People are building houses for thousands of years. Almost everyone has seen houses build and how they're constructed. Also many people have seen buildings beeing constructed in all sorts and forms.

With software, it seems that only software developers 'know' how it is constructed. There are 'no' rules of how software should be constructed. Many developers did not have any education how to constuct solid software or did have education that applied to software development in the DOS age.

It takes a lot of education to be an architect of real world buildings. It takes no education at all to be a software architect.

2. There are far to many materials [software devlopment tools] of which you can build software. VB, C/C++, Delphi, C++, VFP, Java, etc... With houses you have a few major materials: Wood, stone bricks and concrete. These materials are well known for centuries now (thoug they also come in variaties) and the differences between these materials is well known, even by non experts.

3. Beeing a good software developer is a hard life because everytime you think you know how to build software, our software vendors come out with the next hype. Not knowing if this hype is going to last, you're forced to follow this hype because all your customers want their software to be build with this new technology.

Simply put. Software development technologies evolve simply too fast. Don't forget, software development in its current form only exists one or two decades.

4. Hypes. Because some ,loud mouthed GURU or software vendor thinks he has a better way of developping software whole bunches of sheep follow the GURU without validating (maybe because they're not able to validate) the new religion.

5. Too small building blocks. When building houses, you build your house with well know standardized building blocks. In software world many 'houses'are build with self baked bricks, self cut wood, selfmade concrete, self constructed plumbing etc. The size of the buiding blocks depends on the material (Programming language). In C/C++ the building blocks are much smaller than in VFP.

Walter,





>Holding back as best I can. . .
>
>I don't think that you caught his drift at all! Nevertheless, I will comment only on what you wrote here.
>
>Firstly, things very rarely go wrong with a house whereas they too often do with software. You don't think that there are lots of factors that go into the construction of a house??? I would guess that there are more factors to building a good house successfully than there are in building a good piece of software! There certainly are many more manufacturers involved!!... And a wider variety of skills too!! Frankly it has always amazed me that a house or a car can be built so cheaply compared to software!
>
>That a problem is far more easily detected in a (physical) house than it is in software is WHOLLY because our manufacturer of choice (MS). They could make it plain as pie IF THEY CHOSE TO, but they don't and we let them get away with it!!! Take the MAC platform, which is widely said to virtually never crash. I gotta bet that SUN is far more reliable too and I know that IBM mainframe software is.
>Please don't blame it on non-MS software like drivers. MS could address that too, if they wished to. They don't wish to and, again, WE accept that.
>If anything, software should be far far EASIER to manufacture "cleanly" because it is non-physical!!!! That it is as it is today - CRAPPY - is testament to marvellous marketing that is focused on NEW and not on BETTER. Oh sure, they say it is "better". From a functionality point-of-view they may be accurate, but from a QUALITY point-of-view they are lying through their fangs.
>
>I honestly can't think of any other endeavour in life, save possibly marriage, where so much slack is so continuously cut by so many for so little.
>
>In a follow-on message you attributed the article's thrust to the author's involvement with Lotus Notes. How do you 'connect' them?. . . is it that he too probably hates that product as you do and so was inspired to write the artlce or is it that he is attached to Lotus Notes so his voice counts for naught?
>
>Jim
>
>>I agree with him that lots of software is just plain bad. However, there are so many external factors that affect an application that it is not practical to demand the same quality as in physical construction. If something is wrong with your house, it is easy to determine what it is and how to fix it. If something is wrong with software, you can't always figure that out. Is it another application running? A driver? A service? that is causing the problem? There are just plain too many external factors affecting the application.
>>
>>>Howdy everyone:
>>>
>>>I ran across this article, read it through and found it to be very interesting. I thought I'd pass it on to everyone here and see what all of you thought.
>>>
>>>http://www.chc-3.com/pub/beautifulsoftware.htm
>>>
>>>CT