Re: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

Just remember that "Quality" is something that is defined by the purchaser
and doesn't necessarily line up with the technologist's view of what makes
something "better". One might consider Microsoft Word to be an inferior,
buggy, bloated software product, but is that what the consumer sees? Maybe
they see "compatibility with the rest of the world" to be a big deal. Maby
they think "low price" is more important - or "Integration with other
Microsoft Products" is a key value. All other things being equal, they might
prefer one that was less bloated and more bug-free but all other things are
seldom equal, are they?

And yes, Word is superior in many ways to earlier word processors (Does
anybody *really* want to go back to using TECO? Well, maybe *somebody* does,
but they are far and few between.) and that's an example of where market
forces allowed a better product to supplant inferior products. There are
probably things emerging that would be "better" than Word and they may
eventually emerge on top too. Markets work - just not necessarily overnight
nor according to what the technologist may prefer.

MDC
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/

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    "Going cold turkey isn't as delicious as it sounds."
        -- H. Simpson
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Frank J. Lhota <NOSPAM.lhota.adarose@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:mUK8a.23783$8f7.21516@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
> In my time, I have constantly seen market pressure fuel many hardware and
> software improvements. The companies that failed to make improvements in
> their products have often suffered tremendous falls. (Remember WordStar,
the
> MicroPro word processor that once held over half the word processing
> market?) I am not saying that we in the software industry could not do
> better, and I wholehearted agree that software development as it is done
> today needs much better quality assurance techniques. But one cannot deny
> how far we have come. The proof of that is just one attic away.
>
>