Permit me to be blunt: you are talking as if you have never actually worked in professional programming. I assume that this is not true, given that you have been with this group for over a decade and clearly are quite knowledgeable about computer programming, but you give the impression of someone who thinks that computer programming is about designing and writing computer programs, someone who has never seen his special snowflakes get thrown into a big melting pile which some cat then urinates on (to use Peter Welch's oddly apt metaphor).Brendan wrote:If pretty positive that, if my OS is ever usable/released, users will look back at the whining and criticism I get from various people (who won't even consider doing anything more than poor re-implementations of tired old ideas), and be completely unable to understand how I manage to resist the temptation to unleash the "wrathful purge" that this forum desperately requires in order to reverse its continuing de-evolution towards a "kindergarten idiocracy" (where those that have learnt not to think and to only regurgitate what they've seen elsewhere have somehow managed to decide they are "superior"; despite the fact that even the most inexperienced beginner has far more potential than they do, simply because an inexperience beginner hasn't been infected by the plague of "failure to consider anything different" yet).
Nothing could be further from the truth. Those are the least important, and least difficult, parts of software development. The hard parts are all in interpersonal communication, and I have yet to see a mathematically solid algorithm or heuristic to solve that, never mind one to solve things like being hired by an idiot whose sole point of reference in IT is a fifteen-year-old article in Wired that he read while in the dentist's office, or to connect two 'standard-compliant' libraries which not only aren't compliant but are completely unusable, which the boss has mandated the use of come hell or high water.
I have seen companies hire two dozen programmers at rates of between $60K and $120K USD per annum and then keep them idle for six months waiting for programs to be fixed which never came (I was in the group for four of those months, and it was the easiest $20K I ever made, thank you, SIAC and Kaiser Permanente!).
I have seen a company president announce that no testing will be done on the company's software before it ships (and then, when I left, tell the graphic artist, my friend Sophianna, that she needed to learn Access 97 programming ASAP to cover for my absence).
I have seen managers fire programmers for telling the truth, and managers fire programmers for refusing to lie to customers.
I have seen a company president fire my friend Sophie (the same from the earlier story, who had been hired as a web artist and then dragooned into system admin) because she didn't back up a mission-critical drive which he'd refused to buy backup media for just one day prior, backup media which she had been asking him to authorize the purchase of for the previous six months.
I have seen a major bank put every one of their web developers through a $25K-per-head training course only to fire the whole team because they decided to hire offshore experts in a completely different system instead (a move which just happened to coincide with the dropping of the Dot-Bomb, but surely that had nothing to do with it of course...).
And oh yes, I have seen companies - and government offices, and NPOs - where every computer in the place was at least 12 years old, and where there were no prospects for replacing them in the near future.
These aren't edge cases. These are not flukes. And while some were short-lived startups that died of their endemic stupidities, others were big, successful corporations, or major government offices.
This is exactly how the majority of companies treat IT, because even at major software shops, programmers, IT techs, and system administrators are all generally seen as over-priced craftsmen whom they would replace as soon as something that looks cheaper comes along. The majority of companies, even companies whose primary products are software or IT services, view IT as overhead, not capital. Regardless of whether this is right or wrong, it is the truth.
Think I am wrong? If I were, things like The Daily WTF and the Tales From Tech Support subreddit wouldn't exist. The now defunct F***ed Company website wouldn't have existed. The Dot-Com bubble wouldn't have happened at all, because that was driven by people looking, not to make a product, but a quick buck, people who had no idea what 'the information superhighway' was but knew that it was raining venture capital thanks to it.
I would have expected you to have seen things at least as bad as these if you had been an IT professional for even a fraction of the time you have been on this forum. I can't see how you have kept up your belief that you can force people to accept your software solely on the basis of it being "better", according to you, unless you have decided to blame the cat for piddling on your snowflake, instead of either the guys who asked for snowflakes when they really needed soap flakes, or the ones who decided to throw them all into a big pile out under the summer sun.
Let me be even more blunt: QUALITY DOES NOT SELL SOFTWARE. Period. Marketing sells software. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Apple, Facebook, Google, and pretty much every other "successful" IT firm succeeded because they pounded people with the idea that they needed what they were selling. They didn't even have to know what it was, just that they needed it. Whether they did or not, or if it was any good or not, didn't matter. Most software is the electronic equivalent of a Pet Rock, yet a slick marketing campaign can convince many, many people that they can't live without some program whose purpose is a mystery to them even after they have tried to use it.
Yes, it is true that great marketing can fail if the product is terrible (though you'd be surprised how often that isn't the case). The converse is not true, however - high quality cannot sell a product if the marketing isn't there. I assume you know that part, but you keep speaking as if your system is destined to be successful, which seems to be as much a way of setting yourself up for failure as assuming it will fail is.
I truly do respect your intelligence, Brendan, I think you are probably a lot smarter than I am, and certainly more knowledgeable about PC system programming. I just can't help but think that you are overselling yourself based on that intelligence. The smartest people in the world can still fool themselves if the let their faith, confidence, or ego get the better of them. I am glad to see that you are doing something new and different, but the fact that you are denouncing others because they don't have the same high aspirations you do is a Problem, one that has and will continue to cause problems in this group if you don't address it.