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Seems that we have the same friend
It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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A beer is found in a bar...
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What would claws you to post that?
Ravings en masse^ |
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"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Sure, you had to go and bruin my day!
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Yeah, he had to go and be a major ursa-hole about it.
Software Zen: delete this;
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We developed a product.
It was really done in a bad way, by patching up resources from different teams.
I did not like it at all.
When I use it myself, I could see at least a dozen glaring issues.
Just because we couldn't allocate resources into bug fixes, even the basic bugs were left alive.
I had quoted an estimate of 2 weeks to give a final build (If someone's allocated for the bug fix)
BUT
The sales team tried the product in it's current state. Went straight to demo with the customer.
Now they've sold it. Customers are signed up.
They are using it, with all the bugs showing up randomly.
And even the customer says they are happy And waiting for the next build.
Strange. Totally different ideas. Now we are allocating resources to fix the bugs and make it good one.
I'm known for perfecting till the last bolt is tightened. I guess I'm a bad seller.
It's really a tough thought to sell a product with known bugs.
I'm just imagining how brave & courageous Bill Gates & Ballmer should have been.
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If you have an innovative product, customers will put up with quality problems. Once your product has competitors and becomes more of a commodity, quality and cost become important.
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But ... a product - no matter how innovative and original - that is riddled with bugs gets remembered for the bugs, not the originality: when a competitor appears it's mentally compared against the buggy version, not the latest.
Remember the Frontier: First Encounters[^] debacle? A "premium product" so riddled by bugs that PC Zone illustrated it's review with a turd tied up in a pretty bow: even making it shareware couldn't shift the bug-fixed version.
It's a risk!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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True. The quality needs to be improved in subsequent releases, or the product will get displaced.
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Don't underestimate the importance of improvements!
If customers see that every new release has a good handful of significant improvements, they tend to accept those bugs and deficiencies that are not yet fixed, assuming that they will be taken care of in the next release. Or the one after that.
I have been working on products where we always had implemented and tested a few improvements that had been requested for some time, but we deliberately left them out of the current release - it had enough already. We had new release every few months, and those things we held back was to have an extra buffer just in case we ran into problems getting other functionality / fixes up for the next release - then we could throw in the reserve of improvements had on store. Customers found all our releases really worth the upgrade cost, even though there were still several unsolved problems.
There is a classical study, it must have been in the early 1970s, of the IBM OS-360, analysing the development over time: Over 36 (or was it 37?) releases, the number of known issues formed a marked sawtooth pattern: rising for 4 to 5 relases, then a major cleanup was done, and then a new sawtooth built up for 4 to 4 releases... But even after those major cleanups, the number of known issues was around one thousand. (That was one of the observations of the study: How remarkably stable this figure was over 36 releases.)
You soon learn to be pragmatic. Or, most of us do. Coming out from University, we believe that we can create perfect, error free software. No, we can't. We can just keep on handling one issue at a time, and thereby we all the time cause new issues.
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That seems shady to me at first blush, but it makes perfect sense, and if it leaves the customers happier than they would otherwise be who am I to argue?
Real programmers use butterflies
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Member 7989122 wrote: If customers see that every new release has a good handful of significant improvements, they tend to accept those bugs and deficiencies that are not yet fixed, assuming that they will be taken care of in the next release. Or the one after that. Then... what the heck are we still doing with Windows?
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Windows gaining the required features, improving on the most used ones.
Snarky question: Did you turn off feature usage reporting yelling "Don't you dare spying on me, Mickey$oft!!!" ?
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Peter Adam wrote: improving on the most used ones. Exactly... the icons
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Don't forget the acrylic effects!
Have you turned off spying?
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Not as much as I probably should
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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If this was 10-15 years ago this would 100% apply. We've been so Walmarted, conditioned to accept less than perfect because it's cheaper, that it's seeped into the software world and even into more expensive things.
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You better learn to think in use cases. If the customer is only using the solid parts of your product he is fine. He should never leave the "happy path".
Else he is doomed by the gods of software ...
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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As long as they are not critical bugs like database corruption, its fine.
Cosmetic bugs like some strange GUI behaviour are mostly tolerable.
For Version 1, I mean.
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I think you are lucky they only sold a product with bugs... Customer - depending on the actual use - may live around those bugs...
I had several case they sold plans on paper... And then notified me that the feature should have been delivered yesterday...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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On a Friday once, I was sitting in a meeting between my boss and a client.
"Oh, yes. We support that device."
"Oh, we didn't see it in the list."
"Well, you have an older demo version that doesn't show it. We'll send you the updated one on Monday if you like."
"Yes, please"
Guess what I and the hardware driver guy were doing that weekend!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Burying the boss?
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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You got it! (In my mind!)
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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This is so true and it happens all the time.
God is an engineer, he made all good things - with bugs.
The devil is in sales, requires money to get into the state park.
And runs a gift shop outside the gate that sells bug spray at elevated margins.
Bless sales, they have no brains but the gift of gab and get commission on sales and find it just fine to lie. They have a clear conscious because heck, they didn't make the thing. And in a matter of seconds could be selling something else somewhere else if this one doesn't fly. These people are both a dime a dozen but truly good ones are hard to acquire.
Engineering knows absolutely it's a cobbled together POS. - For Pete's sake, don't let em talk to anyone, they'll bring us all down! And if this doesn't fly the poor old sod has to go sell himself to another company without the good looks and gift of bs trying to sell his skills to someone who might not be an engineer.
So, yeah.
And look! It's another day.
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