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by Mark Glaser
Since humans design and program hardware and software,
mistakes are inevitable. That's what computer and software vendors tell us, and it's partly true. What they don't
say is that software is buggier than it has to be. Why? Because time is money, especially in the software industry.
This is how bugs are born: a software or hardware company sees a business opportunity and starts building a product
to take advantage of that. Long before development is finished, the company announces that the product is on the
way. Because the public is (the company hopes) now anxiously awaiting this product, the marketing department fights
to get the goods out the door before that deadline, all the while pressuring the software engineers to add more
and more features. Shareholders and venture capitalists clamor for quick delivery because that's when the company
will see the biggest surge in sales. Meanwhile, the quality-assurance division has to battle for sufficient bug-testing
time. "The simple fact is that you get the most revenues at the release of software," says Bruce Brown,
the founder of BugNet, a newsletter that has chronicled software bugs and fixes since 1994. "The faster you
bring it out, the more money you make. You can always fix it later, when people howl. It's a fine line when to
release something, and the industry accepts defects." It may seem that there are more bugs these days than
ever before, but longtime bug watchers like Brown say this is mostly a visual illusion caused by increased media
coverage. Not only has the number of bugs not changed, but manufacturers are fixing them more quickly. But while
the industry as a whole may not be buggier, one important new category is, arguably, more flawed than other genres:
Internet software. The popularity of the Internet is pushing companies to produce software faster than ever before,
and the inevitable result is buggier products. "Those are crazy release schedules," says Brian Bershad,
an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington. His Kimera project helped catch several
security bugs in Java. "The whole industry is bonkers. Web standards need to be developed and thoughtfully
laid out, but look at all the versions of Java and HTML. It's not that the people aren't smart; it's just that
they don't have time to think." But software and hardware companies persist in arguing that we should put
up with bugs. Why? Because the cost of stamping out all bugs would be too high for the consumer. "Software
is just getting so incredibly complicated," says Bershad. "It's too expensive to have no bugs in consumer
software."
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