Re: How do... YOU... do... "IT"?

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:18:30 -0000, "Julian Flood"
<jf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I suppose it's inevitable that programmers get carried away with
>really really cool software, but it's a shame they don't actually come
>and ask what people would like in a word processor package.
>
>Stripped down to basics.
>Quick.
>Easy to save, hard to delete.
>Word count.
>Easy to write in bizarre formats on screen because writers are like
>that.
>Easy to see what the damn thing is doing when it decides to insert
>extra line spacing in the middle of a document when there's been no
>change to it for months so where did it get the idea to do that?*
>Easy to print out standard formats.
>Bolt on extras for writers who will all, except for me, need lots of
>silly but vital additions.
>Cheap.
>
>It's obviously a very difficult task.
>
>JF
>*Bloody MSft.

That footnote is actually the Clue. The reason being, when you've
written a good, simple word processor, you sell it. Everyone who
wants it, eventually gets hold of a copy. With luck, a lot of
those are people who will actually pay for it. Everyone now has
SuperSimpleJoyOfWords.

Then your income stream stops.

What can you do? Well, *some* idi^H^H^ people want extra features.

So you add those extra features, and you can sell SSJOW v 2.0.

Not nearly as many copies though.

So in SSJOW v 3, you add lots of features nobody in their right
mind would want, convince their bosses to upgrade[1] and make
the file format incompatible with v2. (Which is why you can't use
plain ascii, with markup[2], as the file format.)

Even if your boss is too smart to fall for it, enough of your
customers and clients have it that it's cheaper to pay for the
upgrade than keep using your old, but perfectly satisfactory, v2.

None of the above includes fixing bugs, because people will not
just resent paying for bug fixes, they *really* resent paying for
bug fixes, and might even start looking at alternatives. If there
are any *very* serious bugs, you might allow the trainee tea-boy
to fix a few in his spare time, while your best programmers are
adding more "new features".

Of course, for version 4, the software company is really straining
to think of new features to add, but see also [1].

Jonathan
[1] A good trick is to be the company which sells the operating
system. Then you can keep changing it in ways which require
customers to buy the *latest* version of the word processor
software. Or at least fool them into thinking that's the case.

[2] Don't believe that the XML save format is plain ascii with
markup. Well, it is, but the XML tags need to be standardised ...
and of course, there will need to new tags, in response to
demand[3] for new features, and old versions of the WP won't be
able to understand the new tags. This is a very *cheap* way to
build in obsolesence.

[3] The demand is not, of course, from the customers, but from
the software company's shareholders.

--
Mail to spam auto-deleted, use jlc1 instead.
(That's jay ell cee one, if your font makes l and 1 look the same)

.

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