For many years now, the theme for all my conference talks has been “Improving Code Quality, One Developer at a Time™”. My only goal with my sessions for the foreseeable future is all wrapped around this idea for these reasons I will discuss.
First, as a contractor, the code that I see is, for the most part, very bad, including architecture. On a recent project I worked on, when I analyzed their code, I found over 15K code violations, another solution had over 65K violations! This is unacceptable especially when management will never give you the time and resources to fix them. Ship it! Unfortunately, this attitude will just come back to bite them in the future and cost A LOT more to fix. They will lose even more money due to customers bailing and going to a competitor (something I described in detail in one of my books).
Second, the software I use is getting more and more frustrating if it even works at all. This includes Visual Studio, Windows and apps, iPhone OS and apps, web sites and more. I think the older I get, the less patience I have; especially since I’m a software engineer and I know how software should work. Most of my complaints to me are common sense and not that hard to implement.
These two tweets sum up my feelings -
- I’m always amazed how little effort companies put into quality software. Just keep putting band-aids on bad code/architecture.
- Most companies I've done programming for view security as not required unless something happens.
Years ago, I found out that most companies help you if you tweet what you have found, since tweets are public.
Web Sites/ Browsers- Computers are getting faster and faster… then why do web sites get slower and slower??
- I found a Microsoft site that does not support Live accounts or special char’s in passwords!
- If I can see it (search box etc.) I should be able to use it. Fix your JavaScript loading!
- LinkedIn, why can’t users output their profile to a great looking resume?
- com, don’t get me started about their mobile app!! Website needs work too.
- Microsoft Edge is useless on slow Wi-Fi connections. Fire Fox works fine.
- Site that immediately display a popup when I go to their site REALLY irritates me?
- Why do I have to create a login just to submit a resume for a job?
- Why when I have 100Mbps download at home, web sites are still so damn slow?!?!
- Forces you to install apps you might not want to use, leading to eating up hard drive.
- All Office apps should practice parity when it comes to short-cut keys etc. Even more important between Windows and Mac Office apps.
- OneDrive continuously has issues figuring out recent photos on an iPhone which has led to months that I could not backup photos.
- OneNote, does not allow tags to be synced to logged-in account.
- OneNote, have you tested iPhone app with LTE signal? It tries to sync and then just disappears.
- Outlook does not mine for email address to auto-load list from emails. Need this when I rebuild a computer.
- PowerPoint does not seem to have kept up with technology. Seems pretty much the same as in the 90’s here are just some of what I have been complaining about for many years, even to Office PM’s at Microsoft which seems to have gone on deaf ears:
- Audio fade-out doesn’t work. Can’t control audio volume in effects either.
- Can’t link videos to slides so they don’t add to the file size and save time.
- Can’t move animations from to template anymore (use to work before a recent update).
- Can’t replace a picture or video which means when I do I have to reapply styles, position and animation! Arrgh!
- Can’t setup defaults for effects (settings)
- On Windows 10 on my Surface 3, it can take close to 5 minutes to save one of my slide decks. Same deck on the MAC takes just a few seconds.
- Pictures and videos can’t have a keyed-out color
- Videos can’t be made as the background. If I put a video as a background, the Morphed effect causes PowerPoint to just disappear.
- Someday, I hope to figure out how to create groups in Outlook on Windows 10!!
- When I’m working on a new edition of one of my books, I can often be heard cursing Microsoft Word! It’s terrible formatting docs to print as a book and even worse for the ePub format.
- When Office apps do an auto-save, it can lock up my computer for up to five minutes. Rebuilt my computer and still happens.
Turnip TurnipPosted Jan 6, 2021, 7:51 PM
I don't know much about tech at all. Still I actually thought by this time technology would be lightning fast, it's really frustrating when it is often far slower and buggier than the tech I had 20 years ago. And the bugs my god the bugs, I literally can't go 30secs without something failing me. They are so insanely numerous it makes doing literally anything feel like actual torture. These last 10 years especially have felt like one never ending exercise in psychological torture.
Alexander EmpyrePosted Oct 19, 2018, 3:36 PM
I’m writing a research paper about this exact topic for college, thanks for hitting the issue on the head! I could use all the help on the topic I can get, so if you have any more stuff you wanna discuss on the matter, I’m @AlexanderEmpyre on social medias
Jak StonePosted Aug 6, 2018, 10:37 AM
Cheap and greedy. Let’s hire the cheapest foreign labor we can and force them to be pump out as much as possible with no time for fixing mistakes. And now I literally can’t go 5 mins without having to deal with several bugs. It’s been terrible for my blood pressure.
Jane SuppenPosted May 30, 2018, 2:32 AM
A few questions for you David. 1. So why is this the new reality? Is it because big companies, like Microsoft, now have a monopoly they have no reason to create good products that actually work. If they had done this in the past they would never have become big! Why are there no competitors that can devise better products. Having to develop software to run on Windows seems unnecessarily limiting to innovation. 2. What can be done to change this current environment that has created the mess that is Windows 10. It seems platforms/software are all about being compatible for use with a mobile device (which while great for Instagram and games, becomes wasteful and annoying when trying to actually accomplish work on a laptop). How or what do you think will be the impetus to turn this decline around?
Wm DavisPosted Jan 29, 2018, 10:09 AM
After thirty years of software development, I've seen little change other than a decrease in comprehensive knowledge of the language one is using and general algorithms. So many people now just copy code from the Internet, implementing code that they really don't understand. After thirty years, I've failed to find one large project that didn't eventually erode into a slash and burn operation only to be saved by superhero engineers.
Nigel FernandesPosted Jan 1, 2018, 5:31 PM
Most companies are getting greedy and want more and more profits and not caring about the customers ... companies forcing you to sign up for services instead of a one time payment .!!! ... even gaming companies are following the same approach forcing you to buy addons even after paying for the game.... EA wants to make Fifa as a service ...