donger need food.

Quality

Damnit...I get so irritated at poorly executed products. I'm sitting here trying to rip my Style Council box set into 192kbps mp3s with MusicMatch Jukebox and it refuses to detect CD changes! So I have to waste countless minutes finagaling with starting/stopping the app, with the drawer closed/open, with the CD in different drives, and the stupid app refuses to recognize the disc change. AAaaargh. And when it does work it's some strange combination of leaving the drawer open, exiting the app, starting it, then closing the drawer after waiting for a minute or so. Downright irritating.

What's really frustrating is that it took such a long time to find an app that did what I wanted it to do when ripping CDs. MusicMatch was at the time (2 years ago) the only one out there that'll look up the CD name through a far superior database (CDDB) and let me configure how it organizes the ripped mp3s (I like it to store them in subdirectories named: artist - album) and let me specify the ripped format (wav/mp3/wmv) and it uses a pretty decent encoding algorithm.

Anyone know of anything better out there? But wait, that's the problem. Why do I have to keep getting different versions of software, from different vendors? You buy a piece of software and if it solves your problems why should you go through the hassle of learning something new? Man, Lotus 1-2-3 was one badass piece of software.

Grrr...I just long for the day to come when software engineering establishes itself as a proper engineering form, like building cars and bridges and buildings and electronic components. It's so frustrating that everyone treats software as kiddie toys. I mean, if I press the brake pedal and the gas pedal at the same time in my car, it doesn't blow up. But it happens all the time in software. Press this button, press that button, ka-blam-o.

Sigh. It's all a pipe dream. 10 years in this business has shown me the reality: companies dump as many features as they can into a product, push outrageous schedules, and try to get away with as little infrastructure investment as possible (best practices, QA, good engineers, better managers, unified company concern toward quality) while maintaining the bare minimum of customer satisfaction. Maybe one day it'll all change?

Hrmph. I shouldn't have started washing clothes so late. The last load is still in the wash, and there's a pile of whites to hang.

posted by VirtualErn @ 2:00 AM

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