The computer industry’s track record is just shameful. In what other area of our consumer life would we accept ‘buggy’ products that only work some of the time? If your car (assuming it wasn’t a jalopy), tennis racket or can of Coke failed regularly, you’d be pretty upset. Yet, the software industry has failed to meet our expectations for so long that we’ve come to expect their products to break on a daily basis. A daily basis!
In apologizing for not addressing the current malaise the average computer user suffers, Robert Scoble points to JD Lasica’s exhaustive advice on securing your computer. Lasica has written a 2837-word letter to the average computer user, explaining how they should protect themselves.
Does no one else think that’s absurd? This is like selling someone a doorless car, and then giving them a 3000-word treatise on how to assemble and install the doors themselves. Why isn’t the computer industry protecting us? That’s what we pay them for, after all.
On top of the shoddy products we’ve (I could’ve raised more of a fuss about the product not doing what the docs said they would) been producing for thirty years, we can’t even defend our customer base against malfeasance. Forget the car without doors, we’re selling houses without walls.
Incidentally, I’m not attacking Mr. Lasica here–he’s just trying to be helpful. Nor am I singling out any one software or hardware producer–they’re all culpable. My questions are rhetorical, and are more meant to rant and stir the pot than actually get answered. I understand the complexities of software development, the market forces that rush releases and the delicacy of operating systems. Still, my car starts every morning, my apartment holds together–why can’t my computer?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Hmm, I wish that comparing cars to software was fair. But, let’s go for it.
Cars were invented in the 1890s, if I remember right.
But in the 1920s you started them by turning a crank.
They didn’t get seatbelts until, what, the 1950s?
Airbags didn’t really appear on almost all cars until the 1990s.
There weren’t good roads until the 1940s.
When did traffic laws come into effect?
Now, cars don’t have dependencies on other things. Our computers have thousands of interdependencies.
Our cars are made out of physical things. Things that are easy for the human mind to perceive and minipulate.
Software is made out of bits. Huh? Instructions. Huh? You can’t see it. You have to work very hard to conceptualize it so your human brain can deal with it.
Cars don’t change very much. A model will remain almost word-for-word the same for seven years.
Software changes pretty radically. Does Bittorrent look like anything that came before?
Plus the computers running our software change often and there’s tens of thousands of variations. How many different car models are sold every year? Not very many.
By the way, cars do have extensive manuals. You have to be licensed to drive them. Do you want to be licensed to “drive” a PC? Some people would like that.
Oh, and while you’re driving a car it’s very rare for a criminal to get inside and start poking around and changing things. That happens on PCs unless you practice good security.
If you’re ever in Seattle area, look me up. I’d like to give you a tour of Microsoft and show you how complex today’s software is and just why it’s so hard to make it always work right.
Of course, the automobile industry is 110 years old or so. Microsoft is just about to turn 30 years old. Give us another 70 years and I bet you’ll see an industry that’s doing amazing things.
Amazing! I was going to say exactly the same thing as Robert (though, perhaps, at slightly less length :-P).
For me, Darren’s still unrealized epiphany is this: in twenty years we have made the power and functionality of personal computer software so simple and approachable that even he can use it.
The failure in software is probably process. Manufacturing (not *just* cars) is somewhat of a perfected process. The entire thing is driven on a process so particular that it can be almost completely automated by machinery. Incidentally, that machinery is run by software too. If it’s not up to par, the manufacturing process would fail. So software can be made to such exacting standards as to please the most anti-reticent of reviewers, but you’d have to allow for reduced functionality. Or at least a multi-part system with little to no interaction (think assembly line). That process is well honed and provides for outstanding results. Flexibility is the problem. Consumers demand everything from the computer, and unfortunately the ground is too expansive to cover for developers to quality test every aspect. On the other hand, if process was governed more closely in the development process, there would be fewer errors. Not that this example is of an error, per se, but “cookies” or “easter eggs” in software is a lucid portrayal of a loosely-governed development process.
And then, there are people who are perceived to listen to what users want:
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/08/24/business.of.life.ap/index.html
Maybe the key is to say we want more (or less) from our computers.
Very well said Robert.
Computers are still in their infancy. In the mid to late 90’s rush for email access and web browsing (connectivity) people were (and apparently still are) willing to accept the pitfalls of owning a computer. That connectivity comes with certain security risks, and inherent variables with quick and easy access to code written by just about anyone. Sometimes that code is malicious (viruses) and sometimes it’s just poorly written. Either way, a computer connected is subjected to a multitude of permutations that will affect it’s performance for better or worse.
As someone working in the industry, I DO sometimes wish that people had to be licensed to use a computer.
But I do think Darren has a point. The expertise and the technology exist today to make things run better than they do. However it will take a significant unified effort to make big changes. At this point, unification does not appear likely.
Harumph. Well, great minds think alike – fools seldom differ.
http://smugcanadian.weblogger.com/2004/08/24#a1234
I think cars make a great comparison to computers. I think people – especially computer people – have a tendency to think their industry is very different from what has come before when in fact it is simply another turn on the innovation wheel.
I’m with Robert. Software “engineering” is not anywhere near as old or refined as mechanical engineering is, so expecting a huge piece of software to be as reliable as a BMW is asking a bit much.
The car was invented in 1769, so it has 235 years on the computer. The first card had to stop every 15 minutes to regain steam power.
The first gas-powered car was invented in 1807, but the internal combustion engine dates to 1680. The car wasn’t considered practical until Daimler came along in the 1880s.
As late as 1893, you stopped your car by driving into a curb. I think that, in the early 1900s, rich people hired boys to run ahead of the car and warn people about flying embers and flames. Seatbelts weren’t made mandatory anywhere in the US until 1968. Suicide doors fell open all the time in the 70s. The 80s or 90s Suzuki Sidekick used to roll over. And cars still pollute the air.
My computer hasn’t got nearly as many problems.
Having worked in the software industry for a number of years, I get that computers are complicated. Additionally, we seemed to have glommed onto the car as a comparable product. This is my fault, for citing it as an example. My point was that the car, like almost any other consumer product, is expected to work 99% of the time. We don’t have that same expectation of our computer.
Robert and others make a number of valid points. Unfortunately, he can’t take every computer user on the planet on a tour of Microsoft. While I agree with his point that “give us another 70 years and I bet you’ll see an industry that’s doing amazing things”, the industry has been madly lying to consumers for the past 20 or 30 years. Every new product release is pitched as secure, bug-free, backwards compatible, extensible–pick your buzzword–when that’s frequently not the case.
Maybe it’s a marketing issue. Maybe we need more CEOs to come forward and say “hey, we’re just getting started, be patient.” Maybe we need to manage consumer expectation better? That’s unlikely to happen. I’m reminded of the peculiar slogan the incumbent party used in the last Irish election: “A lot done, more to do.”
So it seems that it boils down to “Marketing drones are making it seem better than it is.” Hardly a surprise – there’s very little free software that claims to be the be-all end-all bug free experience, probably because most free software doesn’t have a marketing department. It’s not everyone in the industry that’s lying, it’s just those that actually get to talk to the consumer.
Chris: Clearly marketing departments are part of the problem. Of course, those marketing departments get their marching orders from CEOs, presidents and other senior stakeholders. Many of whom, I might add, are former engineers.
That said, software developers are culpable as well. Just because something’s difficult and complex doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done right. I’ve seen lots of project managers (who are engineers themselves) approve a product for GA knowing that there are serious bugs in it. Everyone who has contributed to and failed consumer expectation is to blame.
I’m to blame, too. I’ve written manuals and whitepapers that claimed the product did things that it couldn’t. Mind you, I was told to, but that doesn’t exonerate me.
So YOU’RE the one!
😉
my 2 cents:
While I would normally agree with the “it takes time” argument, this time I don’t.
Lets take the 400 lbs gorilla (otherwise known as microsoft)in the middle of the room as a “for instance”. Instead of making their software more secure they have repeated the mistakes of the past in new versions of their desktop software.
They have hardwired IE into the shell. They have ActiveX enabled (which is a major source of security threats). DCOM is still an issue. The IE temp folder is a major source of potential security vulnerbilities. Universal Plug and Play was on Windows 98 but it wasn’t on Windows 2000 but it’s back for XP. In fact they have gone even further by removing or changing the way programs function on their desktop software in the name of “friendly computing” by giving me UNPP back, Remote Assitant, IE, Outlook Express a crappy built in firewall that doesn’t protect against things like Blaster, etc etc. Maybe I’m one of those “miminalism is best” zealots. Among the people I know who have computers don’t think about malware, spyware, worms, virii or trying to get a OS to run at peak efficiancy like I do, they just want thing to run out of the box with no hassles. Most people want the software manufacturers to do it for them and aren’t scouring the web for the latest software to protect themselves against microsoft and their “friendly computing” motto.
Problem with using the car analogy is that there are safety standards that governments apply to the manufacture of cars, we learned that traffic signs were a far better means of communicating the rules of the road compared to stopping at the corner, hitting the horn, getting out to make sure no oncoming traffic was coming before we could proceed through an intersection – so we instituted the use of traffic signs. We learned seat belts saved lives so laws were made to force the manufacturers to install them. There aren’t any such standards for software. It’s user beware on the wild wild web.
I’m starting to think its time to trade my edsel in for a jaguar or porche.
ps: I agree a software manufacturer can’t be expected to know how software will run on a infinite number of differently configured computers but some of these guys are blatantly ignoring problems and marching on.
and I hope I didn’t come off as sounding preachy …
ps: in fairness to microsoft the one thing they did try to do in XP was allow programs to be run in different “modes”(experiencing a brain freeze and can’t think of the proper term atm)if program X ran like crap in XP you could change it to run in Win98 mode but only if you had your hard drive set to FAT32 – if it’s NTFS you don’t have the option.
Apples and oranges.
Computers are information technology, therefore has different needs than transportation technology, so lets compare computers with other information technologies. The pencil is an excellent form of information technology, which happens to predate the car, and damned if I don’t break at least one pencil a week. Comparing apples to apples, computers have a pretty good track record.