August 17, 1999 Web posted at: 10:11 a.m. EDT (1411 GMT) by Nicholas Petreley

From...

(IDG) -- I just finished reading an advance copy of Mark Minasi's book, The Software Conspiracy, which will be published by McGraw-Hill. It is an excellent and fascinating analysis of why most software stinks and what we can do about it.

The cornerstone of Minasi's analysis is that we are all willing accomplices to the negligent software publishers because we tolerate inferior software. Too few of us are outraged when we experience a crash or a glitch. We believe that it is simply impossible to produce bug-free code, so we take for granted that all software is more or less buggy.

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But Minasi illustrates quite well why it is not at all impossible to write solid programs. Among the problems he identifies is that software publishers aren't interested in writing stable, bug-free code because they are convinced that features sell, not quality.

And he includes an impressive list of quotes to prove how much that attitude pervades the industry. The scary thing is that the quotes are from product managers of the very operating systems and applications that most of us use daily.

My favorite of his observations is that software publishers may be sabotaging their products by hiring the best and brightest programmers. His argument is that genius programmers are usually motivated only in an environment of creative freedom. Consequently, they tend to rebel against the work processes necessary to produce stable code. The biggest problem is that if you impose a distasteful or boring procedure upon the prima donnas, they often turn off the creative juices or simply quit.

Then Minasi suggests one of the most radical ideas of all: Although the artistic side of programming often produces innovation, it may take more of an assembly-line mentality to produce efficient, bullet-proof code. What's often missing from the leagues of talented programmers are those coders who are prepared to do the boring but necessary work that makes a product rock-solid.

I think he's right on target. And that's very hard for me to admit, because I was one of those creative-juices types of programmers back in my coding days. The only times I mustered up the energy to produce solid, high-quality code were when I knew my code was going to be scrutinized, or when quality-assurance processes were imposed upon me by others.

By the time I had developed good habits on my own, I was ready to move on to another career. Programming had become boring by then. I'm not saying all creative programmers are like this, but it's a possibility to consider if you want to solve the problem.

So, what can we do to fix the current software crisis, besides hiring meat-and-potatoes programmers and instituting quality-assurance processes? Mark Minasi has many suggestions in his book. Here are a couple that hit home for me.

Computer journalists should focus less on features and more on reliability when reviewing software. More important, we should go out of our way to rip out the fingernails and rearrange the face of any vendor that delivers programs with security holes and bugs.

At the customer's end, people can demand a refund when their software misbehaves. Customers can and should refuse to buy any more of that software until the vendor takes responsibility for the problems.

The above measures are already difficult, and they will be even more difficult in view of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA). As it is, we rarely hold vendors responsible when they deliver bad software. UCITA hands these vendors even more power and immunity.

But believe it or not, I'm optimistic about software quality. Right now, we -- IT people -- are the primary customers of PC software. One reason we're so tolerant of bugs in the software we buy is because the custom software we produce is probably just as buggy. We don't throw stones because we live in glass houses.

But home consumers aren't so tolerant. How many people would put up with a microwave oven if they had to unplug it every 10 meals to reset the internal software? Home consumers are likely to demand the same reliability from their Internet appliances as they do from their other appliances.

Let's hope this trend continues and makes us all more demanding. No matter how well we understand the problems, they won't go away until we refuse to tolerate them.

Nicholas Petreley is editorial director of LinuxWorld and a columnist for InfoWorld.