Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!lll-winken!ames!haven!adm!lhc!nih-csl!helix.nih.gov
From: bert@helix.nih.gov (Bert Tyler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Hidden Features
Message-ID: <819@nih-csl.nih.gov>
Date: 13 Jan 91 16:05:59 GMT
Sender: news@nih-csl.nih.gov
Organization: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
Lines: 20

> >...  I hope that someone at Microsoft reads this and passes along
> > my feelings that they should spend their time making Windows SMALLER,
> > FASTER, and LESS BUG-RIDDEN (along with decreasing
> 
> Remember that one way of improving quality is allowing people to be 
> identified with their work.  If your name appears on a product, you
> are probably more likely to try to make it as good as possible.
 
Speaking *as* a programmer, I know *I* pay more attention to my work
when I know the end-users know that I was the one who wrote it.  I kind
of like that "names" screen whimsy, the same way I liked the fact that
the original Mac had the names of its programmers embossed on the inside
of the case.  Our freeware Fractint program fires up with a scrolling
list of contributing authors for just that reason.

Personally, I think it's a little self-defeating to treat your staff as 
non-entities, and this applies to more than your programmers.  I still
remember the comment by the owner of a company I used to work for when
we had a cutback - he explained that it really wasn't a cutback, because
we weren't eliminating the slots, we were just getting rid of the people...