If You Can’t Do It Right, Bugger Off

Dear software developers:

If you are unable to create your software in a way that follows standards clearly put forth by Apple, Microsoft, etc — please don’t sell software. As a possible exception, if you feel the need to create non-standard software that only works on a standalone computer and only works for the user that installed it, offer instructions on how you’ve done your misdeeds, so someone like me can fix it post-install. As a last resort, if you must sell absurdly written, voodoo requiring software, advertise in your sales pitch that it’s total crap and will only work if you use it at home. Institutions actually rely on well designed software, so that our network infrastructure can like, function and stuff.

I’m talking to you Adobe.
I’m talking to you Inspiration.
I’m talking to you Microsoft, but I know you’re not listening.

I’m sick of writing scripts, moving folders, creating aliases/symlinks, chmod -R 777ing, and otherwise borking my workstations so we can use your new whizbang crap. I hate you all, just so you know.

  • Digg
  • TwitThis
  • Mixx
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Fark
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 9:46 am and is filed under Education, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 comments

 1 

Cool - I guess I can stay at least. ;o)

November 15th, 2007 at 3:06 am
 2 

Yeah, you can stay. If you want me to be a good host, you could both:

1) Design software to function according to standards
2) On top of that, actually document how it works all standardsy, so if I desire to tweak it slightly (read: preload preferences), I can do so without playing “guess and poke” for a month.

November 15th, 2007 at 9:51 am
 3 

God Gravy, Shawn, you sound like me!

November 20th, 2007 at 2:29 am

Leave a reply

Name (*)
Mail (will not be published) (*)
URI
Comment