Frame-4 software

I remember a lecturer [during a distributed systems class, or was it object oriented programming, I can't remember which. But it was a certain resolute lady] speaking about 'industrial strength' software and me wondering what that was. The image I had then was of software that runs nuclear plants but was not sure whether such software was written in 'normal' code or some unpublished, esoteric C statements.

After campus, I was fortunate to work in a development team which worked on a relatively high profile, 'industrial' product. Given, it was a VB app and far from the ASM, embedded systems I have pictured as qualifying to be industrial, but it was one of the better systems I'd seen.

I then went to a non-ISV and got a glimpse of in-house software. The design team at my then previous employer would be mortified. There's one system which has a matrix of like 100 independent textboxes, rather than have a more natural grid. In another system, the about box has a label with the time on it. Problem is, the time is static, in like a 16pt comic font, and in purple. I just used to shake my head in amazement, but nobody else seemed to notice or be bothered. Users were probably told that's the system from IT. Take it or leave it. In another system, error messages are reported as message boxes - MsgBox Err.Description. I kept asking whether the messages were for the user or the programmer, and hence whether the system was for users or the programmer. We all do debugging by messagebox, or by printf, but surely. The logic is that the user can take a screenshot with the error so that the programmer can fix the error more easily. Users aren't very good people but still...

I figured all that was ok, given this was 'in-house' software. The other day I was shown a 3rd party system. This system reminded me of the first programming projects we did. First thing that caught my eye was the default VB icon for forms. Then the forms themselves. Like 10 frames per form, with at least 3 different colours for the frames. Dark green. Dark blue. One orange frame caught my attention. It's caption was 'Frame 4'. Again, I felt like I was the only one who noticed, or who was feeling any pain. Or embarassment. Not that I'm a good designer and UI is hard, but surely. It would be a lot easier to leave the controls with their default colours. It's also a lot easier to leave buttons as their default size rather than make them half the size of a form, ostensibly to use up some empty space on part of the form. And this system was purchased. Bought. Money was actually given to some people for it. Amazing.

I've never considered writing commercial applications for fear that they wouldn't be good enough [and the support nightmare]. I know I'm not the best programmer around, but as Jeff once put it, it's not my job to be better than anyone else. Just better than I was last year. How people get away with such things is a mystery, but I hope I'm responsible and good enough not to write Frame-4 software.