No One Cares About Software Quality

No one cares about software quality anymore. I mean, yes technically that is untrue and there are demonstrably some people who do, but for the most part, quality software has become a niche luxury while the most commonly-used software has become a slow, laborious cesspool.

I think these are symptoms of chronic, pervasive problems with the way we develop and interact with software. Messing up my formatting upon copy-and-paste is a data-corruption bug, but we don’t think of it this way. Imagine if every time you copied something, half the letters would just come out randomly scrambled.

I get the feeling that the median vocabulary of interactions with computers is shrinking. I see so many people who’s entire computing experience is laboriously moving the mouse, clicking on buttons, and maybe poking ⌘C and ⌘V. For knowledge workers who spend half their waking hours using a computer, that’s akin to being a professional athlete who n... See more