Software Quality (was: Re: rtm and uucp)

[Snoopy T. Beagle]

In article <1988Nov15.180821.20324 at utzoo.uucp> henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:

| The popular software distribution from a certain
| university in southern California is a good example of interesting ideas
| often marred by first-cut [i.e. poorly thought out, messy, sometimes
| incomplete] designs and implementations.

| This is not to say that any random commercial organization, like, say,
| one whose name has three initials and an "&" in it, will *necessarily*
| do better.  But those people can, in theory, afford to spend some money
| on quality assurance.  Universities generally can't.

Does this mean I should "rm -rf cnews" rather than trying to get it to
build?  :-)  Can I trust software from a certain university in eastern
Canada? :-)

These days, a vender is likely to be pushing both hardware and software
out the door as soon as possible so that they can rake in the bucks for
whizzy new feature foobar before their competitor beats them to it.  They
may very well argue that they can't spend any more time/money on quality.

If you want better quality, you need to get customers to demand it.
Customers with large budgets.

It isn't who you work for, it is your state-of-mind that counts.  Tools like
code inspections can help, but they may not buy you much if you're just going
through the motions.
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