Large organizations have trouble building software. This has been true since the dawn of software history, and shows no signs of changing. The decades-long, rolling disaster of Microsoft Windows is a great example of this. I've been hit personally with this. Recent experiences with Windows 8 have renewed my appreciation of the breadth and depth of the on-going awfulness of Windows.
Windows Screen Saver
I got a new computer. It had Windows 8. I was setting up my new machine and I wanted to do something simple. I had remembered that in some earlier version of Windows, you could get the screen saver to display the file name of the photo it was showing. This was useful if you wanted to get your hands on the photo that just flashed by. It's a pretty small feature, but one anyone who stores photos on their PC could find it useful.
So I drilled in to the screen saver.
I went into the settings, and didn't see the control I was hoping would be there.
So I clicked on Help, something I rarely do, but what the heck, that's what it's there for. Here's what I got: The content is missing!
It's a little thing. It's not like my computer crashed. In the world of books, it's like a footnote was missing -- hey, that's an idea, let's compare the new edition of Windows to the new edition of a book!
Software and Books
Most of us know how to judge books. If a book is poorly produced, like the pages tear easily and the type is hard to read, most of us will toss it aside -- it may have great content, but it's not worth reading. If we get past the first impression, we'll dive in and start reading. The next potential barrier is how well the book has been edited. If the book is full of spelling, usage and grammatical errors, many of us will think poorly of the author, the editor and the publishing house -- the author shouldn't have made the mistakes in the first place, the editor should have caught and corrected them, and the publishing house shouldn't have put sloppy trash in print. Then and only then do we get to the style and substance of the book.
I read a lot of books from many publishers in many genres -- fiction, history, science, etc. -- and I'm happy to report that I rarely encounter a published book that has editing errors.
And by the time a particularly timeless book gets to later editions? There are never errors.
In that context, how is Windows 8?
I've got the latest version of Windows, 8.1, running on a new machine. It's hardly a first edition. Microsoft pours out updates, and I'm up to date. Here's a snapshot:
Note the scroll bar -- there were hundreds more updates that had been applied.
The lovely option that lets you see the file name along with the picture was in an earlier version of Windows. Making a new edition of software isn't that much different than making a new edition of a book -- basically, unless you add or change something, it stays the same. In this case, someone had to make a conscious decision to drop an isolated, harmless feature that gave value to many customers.
Why would someone do that? It's more trouble to drop a feature than just let it ride along on the next edition, so someone had to actively remove it. There is no conceivable objection to the feature. While not everyone would want it, since it's an opt-in feature, it harms no one. It's like someone deciding to drop a short appendix from a book -- not everyone will want it, but those who do value it. In the paper publishing world, dropping it might save a page or two. But in the electronic world? There's no conceivable reason.
I don't claim for a second that displaying the file name on the screen saver is important. I simply claim that the decision to drop it exemplifies the pervasive anti-customer attitude of the Microsoft organization, which unfortunately is typical of large software-building organizations in general.
It's the missing Help file though, that really set me off. Again, it's a trivial error, like dropping a footnote. But why would you do it? How could it possibly slip though what should be a totally automated editing/QA process?? It may somehow be complicated in the labyrinthine world of Windows development, but it's a fixable thing. You have a program that assures that for each instance of Help there's a corresponding piece of content, and for each piece of content there's a way to reach it. There either is no such program or it's broken. In the overall scheme of things (Windows remains horrifically slow, it freezes and crashes, etc.) it's a small thing, but surely by the edition of Windows 8 I am suffering with it would have been found and fixed?
Conclusion
Software is all about productivity, attention to detail and automation. Unless you've got a de facto monopoly, software is also about meeting customer needs. Large organizations in general (for example government, big corporations) and Microsoft in particular don't get that, in spite of the billions they spend on development and (supposedly) quality. I would love to be able to say it's getting better, but most of the evidence is on the other side. Which is why, among other things, good software will continue to be produced mostly by organizations that are small and willing to do things the "wrong" way.
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