[thelist] Quality Control, etc. of MS products

[Techwatcher]

> Message: 19
> From: ".jeff" <jeff at members.evolt.org>
> To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
> Subject: RE: [thelist] Re: thelist digest, Vol 1 #2318 - 45 msgs
> Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 01:15:45 -0700
> Reply-To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
>
> carol,
>
> first you say...
>
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > I've never worked for them [...]
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> and then you go on to say...
>
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > Suppose you're supposed to be a macho coding team, and
> > you're assigned part of a project, and the part(s)
> > you're depending on to TEST your part isn't (aren't)
> > ready yet. What do you do? Of course! You do a quick
> > and dirty (very dirty) parse of the other team's code,
> > so you can test yours. Just for context, right? And
> > what happens then? Well, you're in a very macho
> > environment (nerdy-macho, as in "I worked 14 hours
> > yesterday. I only slept 9 hours last week!"), so of
> > course things fly by, there's little control over
> > version changes and other non-macho stuff (like,
> > quality control, or beta testing, or listening to the
> > customer)... So the bits of code get squashed together
> > to meet the deadline. [...]
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> this sort of assumptive deduction has no merit.  if you'd ever worked for
> microsoft, you'd know the rhetoric above simply isn't how it works.  how do
> i know?  well, i work with someone that's worked on several high-profile
> microsoft products through several stages of development -- ren which
> eventually became outlook, the original publisher, pieces of exchange.  more
> importantly, he worked in the quality control department -- the very thing
> about microsoft you imply you know so much about.
>
> not only are the steps a product had to go through to make it to market very
> rigorous, but the demands made upon developers by the quality control
> department make most software development cycles seem like child's play.
> many software development companies could only dream of having their shit
> together half as much.
>
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > You know this because you see the result: [...]
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> you assume it to be true, but you don't know it by the result.
>
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > NO consistency in the interface, [...]
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> no consistency?  hardly a factual statement.  take a read on the
> requirements for a software vendor to receive an official "made for windows"
> badge on their software product.  you'll find the their *very* strict.
>
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > and multiple (conflicting!) ways of turning things on
> > and off; [...]
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> which came first, multiple ways of turning things on off or the adage that
> with computers you can always achieve the same task in different ways?
>
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> > the dead giveaway is: documentation almost never matches
> > the product.
> ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
>
> this is an unfortunate occurrence (though not to the extreme you suggest),
> but not a dead giveaway of what you might think.  documentation doesn't
> exactly match the product because it's developed at the same time the
> product is being developed from the same spec document.  that's why it's so
> important for qc to be rigid with their testing so the product matches the
> original spec as closely as possible and hence the documentation for the
> product matches as closely as possible.  it has to be done this way.  if it
> weren't and the documentation were developed after the product was developed
> then the time to market for the product would be abysmally slow.
>
> please, don't assume.  don't tell others what you assume.  don't pass your
> assumptions on as fact unless you really know they are true.
>
> <tip type="ColdFusion" author=".jeff">
>
> don't mess with the "check that file exists" checkbox for the .cfm file
> extension on the iis site if you're using any cfgraph functionality.  if you
> do you'll get nothing but broken images or flash movies where graphs should
> be.  that's because cfgraph makes a call to /CFGraphingPage.cfm passing
> parameters to drive the type and style of graph that's displayed.
>
> don't bother searching for a CFGraphingPage.cfm template on your server.  it
> simply doesn't exist.  i suspect that the coldfusion server simply looks for
> this request and executes a built-in jrun process to answer it.  however, if
> iis checks to see if a file exists before handing it to coldfusion, then it
> will obviously fail (since it doesn't exist in the requested path or at all,
> for that matter) and never get passed on to coldfusion.
>
> </tip>
>
> .jeff
>
> http://evolt.org/
> jeff at members.evolt.org
> http://members.evolt.org/jeff/

I'm going to assume you're pretty young (I'm 51, and began coding -- FORTRAN first -- in 1969). (Yeah, I know you warned
me about making assumptions. Can't go through life that way, my dear.) So you probably don't
have the background to remember a time when code was actually pretty clean, and tight, and users expected absolute
consistency (even though it was a command line interface -- mostly via JCL -- or Job Control Language). There were no
official Quality Control departments, but there were written specs (usually no documentation, either).

Then came Microsoft, and weird things started to happen. I have a huge pile of complaints about their software, going back
to my first experiences of their OS. A few lowlights: Powerpoint came gunning for Freelance in the market they had pretty
much taken from Harvard Graphics. The marketing hype on the box said it had the same functionality, in being integrated with their
other products, that Freelance had. But Freelance actually allowed you to use the wp component and develop slide shows from
the outliner view of that wp file. Did Powerpoint? No, but they pretended they did... in the pretty menus, which was probably as
far as most folks looked. Freelance had an export (not in the file/export menu; in the screen presentation module) allowing users
to create literally stand-alone DOS-based presentations. You could hand out a diskette in the street, and instructions to view the
presentation literally fit on a diskette label (like the ones I printed!). Powerpoint only ran as a "standalone" if you included some
wacky Windows-standalone-module on the diskette. Forget reaching folks with older PC's.
 I could go on and on and on, but why bother?

I've know MS programmers, too, and that's how I know it's not the programmers who do the bad work. It's the corporate culture.

Btw, I agree with you that MS has very strict standards for *other companies'* code before they will allow the other companies
to say their product runs on Windows (whatever version). But they don't meet their own standards. Remember when all programs
HAD to be uninstallable? Except, of course, for the MS applications....

Not trying to start a war, but the younger folks don't know why some of us hate MS so passionately. They have literally killed about
4 of my favorite apps (that is, they drove the companies out of the market; I still use these orphan apps). In one case I know of, they
told the original owners of XyWrite -- as MS Word was about to come out with a feature that XyWrite had had for half a decade at that
point (the auto-spell replace feature, with customizable dictionary), that they would sue XyWrite if XyWrite didn't remove that feature!
This is not fair competition; this is bald-faced app-war-by-having-more-capital-to-pay-lawyers.

Finally, by following exactly the MS instructions, I once destroyed a huge file which I needed -- in MS Outlook, trying to create a new
folder (it used the same name, bypassing the steps the instructions had indicated I would be able to go through to name it; then
when it asked if I wanted to delete it, and I said yes, it deleted the PREVIOUS file, the one the cursor was NOT on!). My consulting
friends (in NYC) advised me to try to contact MS. I walked over there, and couldn't get past the front desk. Literally. No one in the
lobby would allow me to talk to anyone, whether I wanted to pay for help or whatever. That was the last time I used a MS product,
other than OS's, and I tell everyone all about the dangers of their products every chance I get.

Cheers --
Carol Stein
techwatcher at accesswriters.com

<tip type="FormMail" author="C. Stein">
The folks still using Nav v.4. browers may not be able to use forms pointing to the FormMail.pl
at Matt's Script Archive -- the updated version 1.9, which was made tighter because of glaring
security holes. Don't use that FormMail if part of your target audience may use these older browsers.
</tip>