Let me tell you a story.
One evening, a young woman takes a shortcut on her way home. It’s late and she’s in a hurry. Perhaps a friend let her down, leaving her stranded and alone.
You know that something bad happens next. If it’s a murder story, the woman is attacked and killed. If it’s a fantasy story, she is attacked and turned into a vampire. And it’s just as bad in real life (except for the vampires).
This is the sad truth about shortcuts. What seems like an acceptable risk at the time, doesn’t pay off in the long run.
Time to be accountable
Here’s another truth. Members of the medical, financial, legal and engineering professions are held accountable for their work. But the software industry has never been held to account in the same way.
In 2014, Robert Martin wrote a wonderful blog post called "The Obligation of the Programmer". It should be compulsory reading for all software developers. Martin wrote this:
“Our civilization doesn’t quite realize how dependent it has become on software.”
The Crowdstrike outage will change this. It wasn’t the first wide-spread IT disaster, but it was the biggest. There will be legal, financial and insurance consequences.
Fair expectations
The young woman in my story has the right to expect that she will be safe. Unfortunately, sometimes that is not an accurate expectation.
Software users have the right to expect that systems are developed according to professional standards. Users expect that software is properly designed, coded and tested. And that those activities are performed by people with the right level of skill and training.
Users don’t know that this is not always an accurate expectation.
Developers take shortcuts. Companies that supply software take shortcuts. In the story, the woman who takes the shortcut, pays the price. But in the software world, the users pay the price for those shortcuts.
Risky shortcuts
There are many examples, but here are some typical developer shortcuts:
- Relying on answers from Google, instead of taking the time and effort to learn and understand what you are doing.
- Being content with code that is "good enough", but not the best you can do.
- Not testing properly, because that’s someone else’s job.
Management is also to blame. Companies want to take shortcuts to wealth that can have serious consequences. Here are some:
- Cutting development staff. This includes getting rid of senior experienced staff, because young programmers are cheaper.
- Not spending money on decent training.
- Pushing developers to commit to time lines that are unreasonable.
We know that software development is difficult and complex. Perfect software is unattainable. But we have to try harder, and set the bar higher. That means not taking shortcuts.
What do you think? Please share your comments.