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I just ran across this little gem and it made me laugh:
An old software slogan at Living Videotext: “We Make Shitty Software… With Bugs!” It makes me laugh! We never ran this slogan in an ad. People wouldn’t understand. But it’s the truth. We make shitty software. And so do you!
Software is a process, it’s never finished, it’s always evolving. That’s its nature. We know our software sucks. But it’s shipping! Next time we’ll do better, but even then it will be shitty. The only software that’s perfect is one you’re dreaming about. Real software crashes, loses data, is hard to learn and hard to use. But it’s a process. We’ll make it less shitty. Just watch!
Talking with an unhappy customer, first validate their belief that you’ve let them down. I agree that our software isn’t perfect. You won’t get an argument here. Let’s move on, find a workaround, a way to get your data back. And we promise to take a look at this problem and, if possible, fix it in the next release.
And that is back from 1995. Wow, I was only 10 years old back then…