>> As I said before, the current situations sucks (a highly technical term).
>> "Top minds" are working on improving the situation, but we're years away
>> from having any technology that will help write solid code. In truth,
>> there's nigh onto no theory that will truly help produce solid code.
>
> Ah.... There is the rub. Now if only some smart pre-doc would take up the
> challenge and create the techniques that will help the software developers
> in developing error free software.
Well, there were Pascal, Modula, Forth, and Java. All of which ostensibly
attempted to address the dilemma of coding complex systems.
One of the problems that comes up here is that the problem is mostly an
engineering problem. And the pre-docs are mostly interested in science, not
practice.
And then there's the concept of testing...the vast majority of internal test
programs and external beta programs are little more than a glorified
"infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of computers". In other
word, enhanced (sometimes even automated) ad hoc testing.
In a naïve test environment, every input into a system doubles the test
matrix. Which quickly brings a test department up against the "practically
infinite".
But enough about that...
> Now if Microsoft was truly as innovative as they claim, and still desire to
> be the Pre-Breakup ATT of the software world. They need to create the
> software equivalent of Bell Labs and put some very smart minds into advance
> basic software research. --- This reminds me.... PARC, are they still
> around? And how much longer can the computer industry live off of their
> ideas?
Oddly enough, the best software ideas still seem to come from small groups
and/or individuals. Most often working in isolation.
Large teams tend to moderate towards the average...unless they've a truly
forceful leader who is compelled towards "the right thing".
> But lets get off of this ranting about good/bad software and get back to the
> original post in this thread. Entourage is 1.0, simple, basic. And as such its
> not bad. Not great either, just not bad. Now what do we want to see? What
> should the Entourage team be spending their time on. Speed and Palm sync are
> two. I want the ability to sync the database between computers. And what about
> GroupWare? Do any of you out there in small, Exchangeless offices find this to
> be a needed feature. I have this terrible image of the Entourage team slaving
> away on some broken feature that marketing says is important and broken. Only
> none of us know that this feature is broken, and even less care. If we don't
> speak up on what we feel is needed marketing wins, and what's important to us
> goes unheard.
Personally I find the entire Palm sync exercise to be a hideous waste of
time and resources.
But that's because I want a single, centralized data store that I can access
from any device, from any location, via any mechanism. And I want the
display device and the server to understand bandwidth limitations, display
limitations, and adjust the information display accordingly.
>From a very American/Euro-centric viewpoint: The telephone allowed access
to "everyone". The cellular telephone bounced that to "everyone,
everywhere". Ubiquitous broadband wireless networking will add the third
dimension: expanding the equation to "everyone, everywhere, everything".
Alas, they'll be no software... The concept of a "Personal Information
Manager" has to expand to fit this coming reality.
In a more narrow scope...I desperately need the thesaurus to be added to
Entourage. When I'm brain-storming, I don't wanna have to launch Word. ;-)
mikel
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