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Subject:The Quick and the Bad From:Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Techwrl-l <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 26 Apr 2000 21:38:44 -0700 (PDT)
I got a couple of irate letters in private from my last post. All of them
angered at how "the industry" does things too quickly, pushes crappy software
on customers, etc. Most of them also had to mention Microsoft and how they
somehow are the AntiChrist.
Okay - here is my bitch. On what divine tablet is it written that anything done
quickly is inherently shoddy?
Yes, time provides the ability to review, analyze, and catch mistakes. But
wouldn't it be preferable if everything was done well the first time and done
quickly?
It seems to me that when a person knows his/her stuff well, he/she can do
his/her work very quickly. I mean - how much debate is there over this stuff.
Write the doc, make a few picture, do some screen prints - bam. You're done.
I've re-engineered entire doc sets in an afternoon.
What bugs me are the people who seem to think that anything good, must be done
exceptionally slowly and methodically. If you trace back through history and
look at the technologies that made a difference. Many of them were implemented
and tested quite rapidly. There was no process or ISO 9001 approved quality
initiative. People just sat their asses down and did the work.
Stupid people make stupid products and stupid documents. Rigid process and
exceptional amounts of time have nothing to do with it. Before you go telling
me how great NASA is, remember this is the moron factory that blew up a
trillion dollar space ship because they forgot to swap out the head gasket on a
rocket engine. Stupidity is more powerful than ISO 9001. All their time and
processes still failed.
Yeeeah
Andrew Plato
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