Perpetual movement of crap

Software is crap. All of it. Or, may be you can prove otherwise ? But I'm warning you - I'm not buying a name underneath the ®, a web-site full of buzzwords, a stellar magazine review or even a community size of China. Why not ? Because neither is reliable. Now, all the above left out, how can you make me believe it's good ?

We desperately lack means to evaluating software quality. Not just quality, but all the -ilities aka non-functional requirements. It's so bad - it's not even funny. We cannot examine the software as such, we never look at it directly, all we have is different directions from which we observe its reflections. Software is incredibly opaque - it's as if you had to evaluate an actor performance on a stage veiled by not one but many curtains. Difficult casting problem, isn't it ?

What exactly are those curtains the software is hidden behind ? I believe they are exactly the steps we take to make it - to come from an idea or perhaps a set of basic requirements to the working machine code. It looks innocent, even proud - all those philosophical aspects of OOP, applied math with its abstractiveness so profound, the development processes with metrics and iterations and so on.

But each step takes us further into the land of not understanding, and the sad truth is - our methods don't work. Somewhere on this glorious path, something slips and all we get at the end is crap. A wonderfully abstract crap. A beatifully modelled crap. A crap produced with the process tailored by developers at a CMM5 level.

And not just that. Now that we have our methods applied, it's impossible to see the thing we have been building in this pile of crap. It's shredded crap in a box - it's impossible to see through. Isn't it funny how testing speaks about black box vs. white box testing ? The box - note to yourself.

Being compared so often to the construction, software development is far worse in that it's a land of fairies - it's difficult to apply your common sense in a world where buildings can be started from their roofs and left hanging in the air.

Imagine that you are buying a house but you can't see it - it's in a box - granted a big one. All you can do is to give it tests - does the water start when you open the tap ? Yes, says the developer, it does - trust me, we have installed the tap complying with the latest industrial standards. Can I see it, you ask ? No, it's in the box, but it works ! You tap something which sort of looks like one and hear the sounds of water. Uhm, ok. Does it have windows ? Yes, sure it does. Can I see it ? No, it's in the frikin box ! How can I be sure the windows are installed in walls, not in floors or are not even left leaning to a basement wall ? Trust me on this, we are professionals here. So much for a black box house testing. Now, white box testing is not much better. When applied to houses, white box testing wouldn't mean you are allowed in to look around - instead you are allowed to look at the blueprints. Oh, now it's so much better. As a home owner I couldn't tell the mentioned tap on the blueprint. Besides, having a finest project of all still doesn't mean the windows are where they are supposed to be.

Unable to see for yourself, how do you estimate the quality of software ? You go for much less reliable sources - the talk of the people who want to sell it to you. Now, that's who you can trust - the salesmen ! Their cheap talk..., but I don't have to tell you that. The words they are using, please, don't let me start - "industrial standard" - that's my favourite... Trade shows, web site reviews, free T-shirts, it's all part of the selling game.

But think - what speaks louder than all the advertisements, and is closer to the real situation ? Hint - it literally yells in your face, sometimes several times a day, you are so used to it, you are skipping it right on the spot by clicking "Next". What is it ? It's the software license. No matter if it's a proprietary license or whatever orthodox OSI certified open source one - the most important part of it says that the people who did it have no confidence in the thing they are selling you. It comes with no guarantee for god's sake. Where else you can buy a thing and rightfully expect it not to work right out of the box ? And you can't return it for a working one, he he he...

Don't ever expect the software not to be crap. You can write it yourself (that's what I personally always prefer), but it'd still be crap, although you'd have a much better hold of it and earn experience. Besides, you can't write everything from the ground up, it's insane. You may just as well pick your software at random and then clench your teeth and stick with it through years until the fact that it's crap is so obvious that you cannot bear it any more. I've seen it a few times when a 3rd party software (complying with industrial standards, no doubt there) bought for ridiculous amounts of money left everybody engaged for a while, harder and harder, until eyes pop out and somebody decides that it needs to be replaced with another one (complying with newer industrial standards).

There is one other aspect I'd like to bring out.

It's ever so cool to proclaim that "lives depends on the software" - makes you so proud and self-assured, like hey ! the software that we write here - everybody depends on it ! We are cool ! It's an exaggeration at the very least. Lives depend on software no more than they do on Hollywood movies - yes, they want it, and there is an outrage if theaters are shut down, somebody may even get killed in a riot, but it only concerns those who actually allowed the movies to take so important place in their lifes. Likewise with the software - if your word processor crashes, there is an Internet outage, your bank's ATM network is out of service, your flight is cancelled while you are in the middle of nowhere, or even if your plane goes down due to a software malfunction - does that mean your life depends on it ? No, it's your habits, your ways, your convenience that do. What's true to the point is that despite having no real importance to anyone's life, once it's been given the right to shape the lives - the software may not stop. We are used to it - it's all around, it's uncomfortable to live without it.

And so, where does this discussion leave me as a software developer ? I build crap, nobody really needs it, but everybody sort of expects that the crap is there every time they look. And so I have to keep the crap running. I come to work every day and keep pushing the wagon full of crap so that it doesn't stop. If I'm lucky, I can take a few hours free of pushing and try to build something different, something which is either less crap, or at least a better wagon someone will have to push. Still.

Perpetual movement of crap, that's what our discipline is at its current stage of development.