[jawsscripts] Re: Petition
- From: "David Pinto" <davepinto@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2012 05:42:11 -0700
Jim,
Thanks for being both honest and bold, and leading the way once again. And
because I concur with both your respect and criticism of FS, I signed the
petition.
My lot is that every year for the past dozen years I must spend at least a
hundred hours or more scripting workarounds for JAWS bugs. My increasing
disappointment is evidenced by the fact that lately, I've even given up
reporting the bugs.
David Pinto
YesAccessible.com
OurAMB.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Snowbarger" <Snowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 10:55 PM
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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