Forum Archive Index - September 2000

[Phil Eriksen <phil@acepay.co.nz>]

Marilyn Munroe wrote:
> 
> Here I was tapping out a missive on how my low spec computer was just
> fine for me when the damn machine hung. Not even <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<Del>
> would work, and so I had to reboot loosing the text of my e-mail.
> 
> The incident has changed my thinking on computer specs. Maybe what we
> crave is stable software. Maybe we think if we we give the software
> more processing power and more memory to play with it will not betray
> us as often.

Certainly stable software is what people *should* be craving, but while
many say that is what they want, their actions do an injustice to this. 
Four common things (but there are others) stand firmly in the way of
stable software : 

(a) It is easier to hire on site support staff than top quality
programmers.  Quite often the software just "gets written" with little
emphasis on bug fixing, design and intuitiveness partly due to 

(b) "first mover advantage" being seen as important, despite the fact
that in most olympic endurance events i've watched in the last week, the
guy that speeds out fastest does nothing more than inspire the others to
keep on running, while eventually running out of gas when it counts -
its the same with software, unless it works, and if you did it too
quick, it won't. 

(c) clients often see little value in stable software, and battle with
the concept of paying for it.  While people can see "value" in a freshly
recruited consultant spending 3 hours onsite fixing a problem, they
can't "see" neither the cost or benefit of taking 5 times as long on the
software to ensure the consultant isn't needed.  Of course, the costs
and benefits are huge - spend much more upfront getting it right, but
after that, save this 3 hour trip 5000 times, and we're talking massive
savings for the client *and* decent returns for the software co, *if*
you can get paid for doing 5 times as much work on the software.  All
that is required is for the clients to demand and expect stable
software, and be prepared to pay a little more for it.  I can understand
peoples thinking tho - they have been trained to ring up and "pay for
support" - they should be dealing with companies where they pay to NOT
ring for support.  

(d) its very hard to say no to people, and no matter how well software
was "planned" people always want more.  If you are not careful, the
beast WILL take on a life on its own, and your simple little system will
quickly become half a dozen modules, with every feature you could
imagine, but with none of the personality, stability or intuitiveness
that made it a winner initially.  


Finally, I spent 12 hours this weekend (and another person spent 12 with
me) basically doing house cleaning on our computers. (we're not talking
many computers, either) Years ago, I insisted on knowing everything I
could about my computer, what files were there, what each file did etc. 
These days alas, its way down the priority list and the exercise was
interesting.  We were having no real hassles with the computers,
however, behind the scenes there were a whole heap of things that while
functional, weren't quite right.  Performance on all computers is now
significantly better - even tho we did nothing magical, and there were
no real problems to start with.  Go figure, huh.

My point is, from a consumer point of view you can't do much about
software and hardware other than trying to choose the right stuff from
the right people.  What you can do, however, is try and learn a little
more about it all, and do your housekeeping (its easier to preach than
practice - damn near killed me :> ).  Not talking major stuff - perhaps
scandisk, defrag etc, make sure your root directory isn't full of
documents, virus checker isn't 6 years old, there arn't zip files all
over the place etc.  I suspect this was "second nature" 10 years ago,
but these days I often wonder how many people bother to do it.

Cheers,
Phil

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