Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Shipping bogus code (was: Re: prototypes required ?)
Message-ID: <1990Oct29.172244.18178@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <14164@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2150@lupine.NCD.COM> <27066@mimsy.umd.edu> <2173@lupine.NCD.COM> <27098@mimsy.umd.edu> <1990Oct22.231028.24623@zoo.toronto.edu> <18632@rpp386.cactus.org> <1990Oct24.164257.20928@zoo.toronto.edu> <1994@mountn.dec.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 90 17:22:44 GMT

In article <1994@mountn.dec.com> minow@mountn.UUCP (Martin Minow) writes:
>>Shipping an imperfect product is inevitable.
>
>I respectfully disagree with my esteemed collegue...

I should have been more explicit about this.  It is not physically impossible
to ship a product with zero bugs, but I don't think doing so is commercially
viable in a competitive market at the present time.  The problem is that the
customers react much more negatively to delays than to bugs, so you make
much more money by shipping imperfect code sooner.  Indeed, in certain areas
commercial success seems to be completely a matter of price, schedule, and
the length of the feature checklist, with the quality of what's on the disk
entirely secondary.

>Perhaps more importantly,
>I worry that it is dangerous to accept "inevitable imperfection" as it
>does not set a suitable goal for system/compiler/application developers...

Unfortunately, goals for developers tend to be set by the Marketing Dept...
-- 
"I don't *want* to be normal!"         | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Not to worry."                        |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry