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Systems that no one will test

154 points · 84 comments · perone

  1. teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
    > I honestly don’t blame them: [...] software is software

    That attitude is the problem. Why does our industry have that attitude towards quality? Every bike shop in my little town is better with quality than the average software shop in the world. Yes, software is more complex than bicycle. But a software engineer also gets paid 10x and has the luxury of spending substantial time on their product, compared to the 10 minutes it takes the bike guy down the street to diagnose and then fix an issue with my bike which I then trust my life with once they are done and I bike through traffic.

    We need to treat software differently. "Oh well, it's just software shrug" does not cut it anymore, if it even ever did.

    1. graemep · · focus · HN ↗
      The customers care about the quality of a bike repair. They will pay more for a better repair, and will not return to someone who does a shoddy repair.

      The owner, and probably user, of a bike is the person paying for the repair. It is to their advantage to ensure it is a good repair.

      People expect a repair will be good, and will blame the person who repaired it if not. With software people often blame themselves for issues, and they have no expectation of quality. They also cannot tell quality until after they are committed to using it. Bike shops do not benefit from vendor lock-in.

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