Blackliszt is down!
That led me to reflect on how nice things are when they work, but how many things can go wrong.
Building and delivering software is nightmare-hard. Given all the difficulties, it sometimes amazes me that anything ever works. This is not news – it’s just the way things are. But I’m going to illustrate it with current events.
Attacks from the outside
My blogging platform has been under attack for days. Here's what I got when I went there.
Here's a little bit about what's going on.
Bad guys attacking! For days and days at a time!
Attacks from the inside
It's bad enough that there are hordes of tough, effective bad guys roaming around outside the walls looking to cause trouble. But loads of folks inside the castle walls, people who are supposed to be good guys, aren't.
This is a huge problem. It isn't widely accepted.
Brute incompetence in government systems
There’s an on-going, massive failure of government computer systems.
10 days ago as of this writing. A whole nationwide part of the Department of Justice has been thrown back to pre-computer days. Details were revealed here.
When you build things the right way, no fault can take a system down. When you build things the wrong way, it might take an hour or two to fix things. If you build a system an unimaginably stupid way, it might take a day. Like an anti-Manhattan Project, no bureaucracy other than the government could possibly have a system that someone would know would take a couple weeks to repair. But that's how it is here!
Amazing brain-dead fails in non-government systems
I got an e-mail today telling me about a wonderful new storage system. They claimed that Gartner had dubbed them a “cool vendor,” which I’d never heard Gartner doing and sounded weird.
So I thought I’d check it out. Here’s the result.
This wasn’t a fluke. Their whole website, not just the e-mail landing page, gave the same result. Good work, guys! Good to see the private sector showing everyone how the discipline of profit-making leads to great computer systems results!
Chaos and obsolescence among the “experts”
When you walk into any computer systems organization, you have no idea what you’re in for. This is because most computer organizations make the Keystone Kops
look like Eliot Ness and the Untouchables.
Put aside all the politics and infighting; software “experts” can be continents and decades away from each other in terms of how to get things done. Most software people can’t even follow the arguments, much less decide what the right answer is. It’s amazing these people manage to get out of bed in the morning.
When it “works” is it vaguely usable?
It’s not under attack, from the outside or the inside. It’s not broken. The internal comedy of errors has managed to deliver a piece of software that arguably “works.” Wonderful!
Sadly, this is where reasonable debate on software would start, not end. Because there are endless ways to get things done in software, and endless ways to interact with users. When you have software companies with loads of employees, reputedly smart, with tens of billions of dollars in the bank, and they trumpet their proud new creation -- and it’s a barely-usable piece of crap, the debate should be about how crappy-but-not-broken software gets shipped. Instead it’s far worse.
Conclusion
This is why smart, motivated start-ups beat rich established companies all the time. You’ve got 100 programmers for every one of mine? Great! The odds are on my side! Of course, the truth is that start-ups mostly fail. Their stuff doesn’t work or nobody cares or they just think they’re great when really they’re just like everyone else.
Nonetheless, a tough, smart, hard-working team can be literally 100 times more effective than the established players, including the cool modern ones like social media companies. Because building and delivering software that actually works and people want is a shockingly difficult thing to do.
Comments