Re. Shag's :"yeah. but most management has no clue. They are so far removed from the development process and they are so bad at management (as in not people people ) that they don't know how to mentor n00b programmers. In my experience, inexperience is the big factor. And that inexperience gets cemented in when developers don't see the consequence of their actions - especially in a waterfall/rational environment. It is especially a problem with network ops is cut off from software development - which happens a lot."
[WS:] This is a really interesting insight which kind of dove-tails with my perceptions of how business works (not necessarily IT). In a way, it is a product of capitalism.
Competition forces companies to adopt technological solutions that protect or gain market shares. And the fact that their solutions are pieces of crap does not mater, because consumers can only choose by different types of similar privately produced crap and "public option" is not available. There are several consequences of that:
1. Even if a private providers develops or stumbles upon a good solution, that solution may be dumped in favor of marketing gimmicks (of the ipod -schmypod type for example.)
2. Proprietary solutions are not conducive to the accumulation of experience and building on shared foundations. This lowers the quality of the product (i.e. making it more error-prone) while increasing the transaction cost, which is being dumped on the consumer. For example, if I want to use, say Microsoft outlook to synchronize my email, I need to buy the whole line of Microsoft products, the OS, the Office Suite etc.
3. Planned obsolescence is the norm, because it is dictated by the market demand for certain level of profitability and it forces companies to adopt dubious innovations to stay profitable and maintain their market position, instead of building up on the strengths of their past solutions. Again, this increases the probability of error and tremendously increases waste, but as long as the consumer or the government can be saddled with the cost of that waste - this whole topsy-turvy model appears as a paragon of "business efficiency."
In sum, the problem lies not that much with deficient programming skills, but with the fact that these skills often take the back seat to marketing and marketing gimmicks. Who cares if we produce crap as long as that crap sells and the management (and key stockholders) are happy.
Eubulides: "Imagine Woj's [great?] grandparents:"
[WS:} You missed my point altogether. I am not complaining about technological innovation but the shoddy quality of that innovation that leaves people with even mild disabilities in the dust. In fact I have always been quick in adopting new technologies, but I resent the idiotic drive to change things around merely for marketing purposes. It has little to do with new technology and everything to do with capitalism, and it sucks.
Wojtek
On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:25 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> It's all totally fucked up. I had to switch to a new cell phone today & I
> could not for the life of me figure out how to download a ringtone. (It's
> Bach or nothing.) I spent an hour trying to do it on the phone; I spent an
> hour trying to do it off the web; I called support and they spent a half an
> hour trying to do it.
>
> Something's wrong with their server I think.
>
> Ugh,
>
> Joanna
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