This blog is dedicated to getting the software manufacturers to provide built in debugging tools for the consumer. These tools could be stripped down traces or advanced memory dumps it does not matter, what does matter is putting the power of fixing software in the hands of the consumer. If software companies are going to continually make the consumer do their debugging and QA for them then we should at least be able to save time figuring out who is at fault. Is it a long running process, all the advertisement add-ons or simply a buggy third party tool that cracked up with the latest release.
As a senior software designer who grew up with flipping switches to load compilers and loved assembler coding I don’t appreciate the garbage code that is simply dumped onto the market. I understand that things are very complex – I know for I work with numerous interfaces across many platforms – but we are now talking the basics.
It would be nice to have simple, easy to implement trace and debug tools for the consumer. This would me that companies would admit that they cannot afford the time or resources to fully test their software, especially when you have a million different combinations of hardware, software and user configurations. This is not a bad thing .. it is just the way it is. I am almost to the point of dumping Yahoo mail because the system is practically useless with IE 9 – Instead I would like to know what is causing the slow performance so I can turn off the offending code.
The other thing that I would to address in this blog is the constant repetitive bad advise that is propagated every time someone has a bug. I may sound rude but on many sites the answers provided by the user community are a waste of time and never deal with the root cause. The software team should be the one fixing the issue at the core .. not us poor smucks trying to find a work around. Some of my favorites issues are:
1. Software downloads that won’t install.
2. Release failures and inability to take responsibility.
3. Yahoo’s embarrassing release with missing functionality.
The other part to this blog is dealing with bad or incomplete advice. I always love answers such as the constant advice given to disable add-ons. How about the software companies actually testing their product before release instead. It seems ridiculous that all functionality should always be lost as the first option given.
Better yet it would be nice if MS and Yahoo and the likes would offer us the ability to trace the resource hogs and truly help them debug their mistakes. Right now I am fighting Yahoo mail and IE9 .. total garbage the two together.
Though I agree that add-ons can be a problem but they are not the real issue.. the real issue is the inability for the consumer to manage the software mess that they are given.
I am a senior software designer, architect with deep roots in Assembler all the way up to the latest in services design and I run into this all the time.. instead of tackling the real problem of buggy code everyone one runs around with Band-Aids.. I can't believe the garbage advice I see sometimes .. some is downright dangerous for your system.
Anyways I am going to push for better client specific debug tools that would allow a consumer to identify the true cause of their performance issues. Enough of the software guys hiding behind bs answers or just ignoring us.....
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