Matt Ryall's Comments

Re: Why software quality is important

noemail@example.org (Brad Baker)

Strangely I have seen software succeed despite of quality.

This may sounds cynical but quality is associated with software success but not mandatory for software success.

If you fill a niche in the market at the right time, you may have success despite having poor quality.

But it may be fair to say it very hard to sustain success with poor quality software.

Re: Why software quality is important

noemail@example.org (Jed Wesley-Smith)

I guess I am guilty of losse definition then too. By “features” I guess I was thinking of the little UI things that make users happy like keyboard shortcuts or drag and drop that work in an intuitive way, or product taxes like i18n and remote APIs.

My point is simply that without your definition of quality you and I can spend almost as much time arguing about what it is as actually creating it. There are many more items that some will consider important for their definition of quality than the ones I listed above.

Re: Why software quality is important

noemail@example.org (Matt Ryall)

I don’t think it’s a problem, Jed. You can build a system that makes the users happy and still deliver on all the aspects you mention.

However, you’ve included one sneaky little item in your list of “vectors” that certainly isn’t related to quality: features. That’s what you need to reduce if you want to concentrate on the other aspects, and reducing scope is almost certainly the key skill of all developers of great software.

If you can’t reduce the scope, you need to allow yourself enough time to pay attention to all the necessary details you mention. Setting yourself a goal for functionality is fine as long as you take the time to make sure you’re creating a high-quality product as well.

Define Quality

noemail@example.org (Jed Wesley-Smith)

Spoken like a true engineer! The only problem is, how do you define quality? There are so many possible quality vectors – maintainable code, user experience, performance, features etc to name just a few – that simply saying “_quality_ is important” is so generic as to be almost meaningless.

Re: On a slow boat to China

noemail@example.org (Scott Farquhar)

Mate,

Kim and I won’t be able to make it - we’re sitting by a beautiful lake in Guatemala.

Have a great trip!

Re: On a slow boat to China

noemail@example.org (rmk)

Try and stop by Hong Kong, I went there last year and enjoyed it.

Re: Smart Quotes: library for curly quotes in Java

noemail@example.org (Chris Broadfoot)

Neat, Matt!

Re: Smart Quotes: library for curly quotes in Java

noemail@example.org (Matt Doar)

There’s a reason why everyone is trying to remove them - they’re a hack! Think of it, back in Caxton’s printing office, early 14th century:
“How do we make conversations look different from words we’re referring to?”
“Well, we got this bit of lead that we’re calling a quote, let’s just use two of them.”
“Good idea, maybe three or four can mean other things later on.”

Re: The infamous Turkish locale bug

noemail@example.org (Tom Davies)

More of a problem than you might think: http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail

Re: The infamous Turkish locale bug

noemail@example.org (James Roper)

I reckon the bug is in the character set. If i capitalises ?, then clearly, it is a different character to the i that capitalises to I, especially if there is also another character ? that capitalises to I. If the 3 different i’s were all treated separately, we wouldn’t have this problem.