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Posted by John DeRosa on December 15, 2007, 5:08 pm
Please log in for more thread options On Sat, 15 Dec 2007 10:47:01 -0700, JimH
>bjn wrote:
><snip>
>>>
>>> Now let me see concrete evidence that programmers in South Asia
>>> (or any other country) are less competent, or produce lower
>>> quality products than,
>>> let's say, American programmers.
>>
>> Quicken is at r5 and it's not even next year yet.
>
>I retired from software development in 2006. I used to develop test
>drivers and device drivers for just about all of the various operating
>systems for use in testing storage devices. I worked with Indian
>programmers on some projects. They were very sharp, friendly, hard
>working guys. They were always willing to take turns working nights in
>order to be available for conference calls. The code that they developed
>was as good as most of what I saw from the American programmers.
>
>I'm not a fan of high tech American jobs being shipped overseas, but it
>seems inevitable. I just think that our government should stop offering
>tax incentives for doing it.
>
>I don't have Q-2008, so I can't speculate about the quality of it. I
>just bought 2007 at Amazon. But, the release numbers don't necessarily
>mean that the quality of the developers is poorer. The reduced costs of
>development may let them accelerate patch releases. Instead of waiting
>until 10 things are fixed, they can release updates for each one of
>them. I don't know if that is the case, but it is a possibility.
>
>Also, from reading here, one release was a security update for the file
>encryption. Those are the kind of things that probably wouldn't have
>gotten done with the higher price of developing software in the US. For
>less money, they can hire more programmers in India than they could here.
IMHO, the Q08 quality is very poor. There were way too many bugs (the
tax planner was flat-out broken), and the application behaves in a way
indicating its internal structure is messed up. Like, the screen
often flickers 10 or more times when doing an operation, because the
code isn't sure what's really on the screen, so it's playing the,
"let's be safe and repaint those controls," game.
IMHO, the four updates aren't because they're "accelerating" patches.
(But, nice try. :-) )
I think the quality problems in Intuit's products aren't the fault of
programmers, developers, or testers per se. That is, the problem
isn't that Mary is sitting at her keyboard doing Java or C coding, and
makes a mistake, and writes crappy code.
The problem, if there is one (and I think there is, but I'm sure
others do not), is one of software project management. Whether the
developers and testers are here or in Vietnam doesn't matter. What
does matter is how their development cycles are managed, what metrics
they use, the testing done before a release, whether a tester can pull
the brake cord on a release, how open the communication paths are,
etc.
You have to manage offshore development differently than developers
who live down the hall from you. IMHO, local development is superior
to offshore development for new products, but offshore can pay off in
routine maintenance or testing. But no matter _what_ you choose to
do, each development team type needs different kinds of project
management and communication styles.
IMHO, Intuit has fallen flat on its face with Q08, and I think
whomever is responsible for development and test management, and for
product direction, ought to have their head on a platter. Q08 is a
joke. Most of the new features are eye candy and/or are
"improvements" on things that simply didn't need improvement. And
while I don't, like anyone else here, know Intuit's internal bug
reporting, I'm very sure that this app has been way more buggy than
other apps I've bought, of equal or greater complexity.
Just my $.02. Flames welcome. Not that they will need an invitation.
:-)
John
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