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- Path: shelby.visix.com!david
- From: david@visix.com (David Charlap)
- Newsgroups: alt.computer.consultants,comp.edu,comp.lang.basic.misc,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.pascal.borland,comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc,comp.misc,comp.os.msdos.programmer,comp.os.os2.programmer.misc,comp.programming
- Subject: Re: Can we do programming without seeing the end user?
- Date: 26 Mar 1996 17:42:01 GMT
- Organization: Visix Software, Reston VA
- Message-ID: <4j9a99$ptf@shelby.visix.com>
- References: <4j20es$ea8@atlantis.atlantis.actrix.gen.nz> <4j2fce$8sk@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <4j7een$3ut@shelby.visix.com> <4j8a9j$nhq@fountain.mindlink.net>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: celica
-
- Gene Wirchenko <genew@mindlink.bc.ca> wrote:
- >david@visix.com (David Charlap) wrote:
- >
- >>Yes, this is a great idea. But there's one big problem - the cost.
- >
- > How about the benefit of doing it right? See my final note.
- >
- >>Taking the time to do all this analysys, plus proof-of-concept
- >>prototypes (to test your conclusions before you commit to them), and
- >>the inevitable rewrite is expensive. You're talking about tripling
- >>the cost of the project if you do everything right as opposed to
- >>what's done most of the time today.
- >
- >>While your users may love you, they usually aren't the ones who pay
- >>your bills. The users' bosses pay you. If the project takes too long
- >>or costs too much, they'll buy from someone else, even if the users
- >>get screwed over by that someone else.
- >
- > This reminds me of the saying "There's never time to do it right,
- >but there's always time to do it over."
-
- It's not just a saying. It's true unless you have a very good
- boss/customer. Most of us are not that lucky.
-
- Try telling one of your customers that you need another month to fix
- the bugs. They'll probably say "no" or "OK, but you're not getting
- paid any extra". Good luck putting food on the table while you work
- for free for a month.
-
- >>If you're lucky, you can find a client with enough foresight and money
- >>to let you do it right, but you usually aren't that lucky. So you end
- >>up releasing something without enough research or testing and hope
- >>it's good enough so the customer will buy version 2 from you - which
- >>you hope can fix everything and remain compatible with version 1.
- >
- > I am getting bloody sick and tired of the attitude with bugs of
- >"What? You haven't upgraded to version <higher-than-what-you-have>?
- >It's only $<number-greater-than-zero>."
- > I am tired of this nonsense. It discourages me from buying
- >software.
-
- Flame all you want, but it doesn't change the marketplace.
-
- If you take the time to get everything right in the first release, you
- will never make back your development costs. The extra time you took
- will be long enough for your competitors to get something else to
- market. By the time your version 1 is out, they'll be on version 2
- with version 3 in beta, and they'll have all the customers you wanted
- to sell to.
-
- Now you're no longer marketing your product into a void. You're
- trying to compete against an entrenched "standard", even though you
- may have started work first. You're going to have to have an
- incredible sales and marketing staff to break into that market, no
- matter what your code is like.
-
- The greatest program in the world is useless to the developers if they
- can't maky any money from it.
-
- ---------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
- David Charlap | The contents of this message are not the opinions of |
- david@visix.com | Visix Software, nor of anyone besides myself. |
- Visix Software, Inc. +------------------------------------------------+-------+
- Member of Team-OS/2 | Quantum mechanics: The dream stuff is made of. |
- ---------------------+------------------------------------------------+
-
