Software Quality rant (was Re: Large email account)

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Michael Loftis wrote:
> And I have to agree with Henrique here, and not just because he keeps Cyrus 
> backported for my older Woody installs :)

Heh. Thanks :)

> Working at a web host we deal with all of the major PHP packages.  I won't 
> name any names, but most of them are pretty poorly written.  Riddled with 
> bugs and security holes.  Because they're written to do one thing, look 
> pretty.  Security is bolted on as an afterthought.

I wasn't even going into the security area.

It's just that I value tools that are done right a lot more than tools that
look nice and are a pleasure to handle BUT damage all my work by doing
surprisingly nasty things at the wrong time.

UI *is* important. But it cannot come first over correct functionality. I
have seen what happened to the software world with most Windows
applications, I consider that to be the empirical proof that it is in our
best interests to not go down that path.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh
---
Cyrus Home Page: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus
Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyruswiki.andrew.cmu.edu
List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html