Bugs are bad, they are not job security (Was: spam)

[Bradley Miller]

At 01:06 PM 2/22/01 -0600, Brian Densmore wrote:
> Bugs are not inevitable in
>code, any more than it is inevitable that Ford will make a car without
>brakes! That 80% would have better projects to work on and companies would
>be more profitable and technology would advance faster. In other words it
>would cause a technological boom, that would spur the need for even more
>consultants. Reliability has a lot to do with corporate hesitation to
>implement. The mentality would not be "Wait until the third bug fix."; it
>would be "We need that to beat our competitor!".

Ah yes, but as time goes on what is acceptable and what isn't?   People are
griping because you can make a car shift into another gear without having
your foot on the brake.  Cars have been that way for ?? years and now we
have to have interlocks to keep stupid people from leaving their kids in
cars to accidently run over them?  (Here's Darwinism at it's best, but a
little after the fact if the kid is running over the parent.  *Sigh* )   

That's why I point to the problems with supporting things -- how do you
know if it's a Microsoft issue or what?   I had generic NE2000 cards in a
PC and would get random errors, and other problems under Win98.  I switched
to a different manufacturer and my problems went away.   Was it Microsoft?
Was it the drivers?  Or was it the 3rd rate generic card?   Who knows?   I
put the same cards in Linux and couldn't get a peep out them.  (Likewise
I've bought name brand ones and had similar issues . . . )   

Sometime, at some point, I believe that there might be issues with Linux
and open source products, trying to run on as broad of applications as
Windows does.   Will it be because of bugs -- and how do you track them
down across ??? libraries?   I don't think bugs should be used for job
security, but I also believe that the more complex the system, the more
variables and unknowns you introduce to the equation and thus, the bugs
will be there.  Macs have bugs, but you can just attribute it down to a
wacky software package or other weird happening . . .you don't have to
worry that "Billy Bob's Used Computer Crap Emporium" had a sale on $2 NIC
cards that may or may not run inside an errector set from h*ll computer. 

-- Bradley Miller