[jawsscripts] Re: Petition
- From: "Bob Kennedy" <intheshop@xxxxxxx>
- To: <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2012 06:55:21 -0400
You get my vote! Want to run for Quality Control Zar? No, sorry. Zars are
appointed by the president...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Snowbarger" <Snowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 1:55 AM
Subject: [jawsscripts] Petition
In case you have not already seen this, a link to a grass roots petition to
FS to improve product quality:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/freedom-scientific-bug-fix-problems
Ok, I'm gonna wax eloquent for a bit.
I signed this petition, not because I don't have respect for the guys at FS
and what they have accomplished. Nor because I don't have sympathy for the
enormous challenge they face, trying to keep up with all the changes that
continue to prolipherate. Quite to the contrary, I do respect their
accomplishment, and think they've got a tough job. , For 15 years, I have,
and continue to, benefit from their work. I remain committed to JAWS,
because it is still the most powerful tool I have available to do my work.
I say, if NVDA can do it, and JAWS presently can't,
just give me a few minutes, and it will.
But, I signed because I generally concur with the basic sentiment expressed
in the petition that JAWS is a critical piece of software for me to conduct
my life. It is not a game, or an incidental amusement, it's a critical
tool. And, as such, it deserves some serious quality control attention.
To be fare, it's not just JAWS that has the bugs. Buggy software is the
norm these days, everywhere you look. Most of it has some imperfection or
other, and much of it is downright experimental, shouldn't have even been
let out of the lab. Much of this is driven by the pressures of a foney
ephemeral market place that doesn't know what it wants until it sees it, and
then it likes it for a day and gets bored, Move on. Just throw that away.
Who cares, it probably had bugs in it anyway. The problem is so pervasive
in the industry at large that, people like me, who write safety-related
software are forced through unbelievable rigor to prove, six ways to Sunday,
that everything works, exactly as it was intended to work, every single
time. No room for mishaps. It doesn't crash, you never need to reboot it.
It doesn't sometimes do this, and sometimes do that, it is dependable.
For every module, or logically related group of modules that is developed, a
rigorous and exhaustive set of unit tests are defined and implemented, to
run that unit through all it's paces, even to the extreme of having to
define adequate test cases to cause every single line of code to be
executed. And, before the entire system is built, all modules are run
through their unit tests, and the results confirmed. Then, the entire thing
is assembled, and a whole batch of integration tests is run on the assembled
system. Those tests accumulate as the product evolves. And, with every new
release, old tests are run again to prove that stuff that used to work,
still does, exactly as it did when it was first introduced, as modified in
subsequent releases.
They make us go through all that pain and suffering precisely because the
state of quality in the industry at large is so bad. Developers seem to
just kind of get it working, and then throw it out there for the consumer to
"enjoy". Notice the quotes.
But JAWS isn't a foney, funny, throw away program like that. It's an
important tool.But, when you think about it, doing all the testing such as
what I described for all of JAWS, on all the operating systems, and service
packs,with different application versions, video cards, , and I don't know,
processor manufacturers? Surely not. But, anyway, that test effort is
HUGE. I'm sure they do testing. I'm just not sure what form that takes.
Anyway, if we get them to be more rigorous, it is going to take them longer
to do stuff.
The rate of releases would slow down. That means the tick rate on your SMA
slows down too, and your SMA lasts longer.
And, FS's income would fall, even as it works harder.
Problem is, the monkeys have to be fed.
So, FS earns a fixed amount of income by ticking the SMA's and a fixed rate.
If we compel them to release fewer features, but with higher quality on the
one's they do release, they can get their tick rate, we can get our quality,
and we can know that we paid a price for that quality, only if we believe
that the number of features we used to get per major release should be
considered the norm, and so dropping back from that so-called norm, is
perceived as a cost. But, if the so-called norm was actually artificial,
in that the cost of persisting bugs, and the aggravation of dealing with new
features that don't work quite right, made that artificial norm less than
optimal, then the relationship between that, and the situation we were
pondering of fewer features but higher quality, is irrelevant,because we are
not supposed to get as many features as we are now getting. If we were, it
would be possible to provide them with the quality level we expect. It
apparently isn't, so we're not.
But, we were getting that many, which means stuff was not like stuff was
spoasta be.
But, that should be abnormal.
In other words, the higher quality, fewer features case should be the true
norm. Can you look at simply moving from fantasizing an artificial norm, to
mentally adopting the true norm as a cost?
What do you know, higher quality, zero cost.
So anyway, I'm sure I'm just preaching to the quire to say that JAWS has,
for ages and ages, been plagued with a disturbing degree of variability, as
well as regression as new releases are poked out. Perhaps , it would make
more sense to release once certain quality objectives for the required
feature set have been achieved, rather than because it is October again.
I have always lived by the aphorism, keep your older versions handy, for a
very good reason. And so, I do.
Anyway, because this is such an important tool for us, It seems good to
collectively remind FS that, while we thank them for their work, we'd like
them to do a little better job focusing on achieving, and maintaining
product quality.
Ya think so?
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