MCBastos wrote:
Interviewed by CNN on 17/03/2012 20:29, David E. Ross told the world:
And, no, extensions are not sufficient to solve a bug. An extension
should be considered only a temporary work-around when there is a report
of a software deficiency.
...the key to what you say here is "functionality" - if it's a new
feature, or a custom implementation, then yeah. An add-on solution is fine.
But if it's *broken*, it's *broken* and if you can code an add-on to fix
something that's actually broken, one would think you just as well fix
that part of the baseline code - even if it took a couple release
cycles. Otherwise the "workaround" becomes just an excuse for inaction.
It depends on the "software deficiency." If only one in a thousand
users, say, considers it a "deficiency," it makes more sense to provide
this extra functionality as an extension, in order to keep from bloating
the basic product.
"Defect" would be a better word to use - if it worked before but doesn't
now, it's a defect and should/must be fixed. If it simply doesn't work
the way someone would *like* it to work, well, one man's "deficiency" is
another man's "feature" and open for debate.
Generally speaking, all features cost /something/. There's a development
cost, there's a support cost, there's a download size cost, there's a
memory footprint cost, there's a performance cost, there's a UI bloat
cost. Managing those costs is part of the product development. And
sometimes users may have a disagreement with the dev team on whether the
benefits of including a feature offset its costs.
Fixing genuine bugs ("defects" as defined above) should only incur
support costs - any growth in the code because of that is just
evolution. What it sounds like you are saying is that managing cost by
ignoring defects is a viable and working option...
For instance, during my old BBS days, pre-Internet, I used a message
reader called Blue Wave. It had a very nice built-in tagline management
feature. When I moved to the Internet, I was surprised to find out that
e-mail clients didn't include this feature. It wasn't a deal-breaker,
but I really missed it.
Price of progress...
However, I came to realize that most users didn't care (even in my BBS
days most users never fiddled with that feature). It didn't make sense
to bloat the program and the UI with a seldom-used feature.
Which is again, isn't/wasn't a "defect"...
Eventually, I found an extension that supplied the missing
functionality. I have been using it since. It works for me and doesn't
bloat the program for the 99+% other users who don't care for taglines.
And that's great...but in this instance you're talking about a feature
of one package you'd have liked to see in another one. You probably
should have had zero expectation of that happening in the first place.
But if you'd returned to Blue Wave and seen the feature broken, then
yeah - you'd be right to complain.
--
- Rufus
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