File specs?

[Fairlight]

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 09:38:36PM -0400, Kenneth Brody thus spoke:
> On 8/30/2016 9:29 PM, Fairlight via Filepro-list wrote:
> [...]
> >The point should be self-evident that a site designer is responsible for
> >the functionality of their own site.  Apparently it's not so self-evident
> >to some people.
> 
> So, as a software developer, you never tell clients "if you find a
> bug, let me know"?

That's a given, which goes without saying.  It -should- go without saying.
Expressing that up-front is a sign that you're not even confident enough in
your work that you feel someone should be able to assume it will be good.
If there's an issue, someone will report it.  I don't think it's really a
realistic concern that they won't.

As a software developer, I squash 99.9% of my bugs before anyone but me
sees my product.  I also do more than a few passes to perform my own QA
after development.  I regression test.  I intentionally try to break it
in obscure ways.  I do code analysis passes to check the sanity of what
I wrote.  Since I also eat what I cook, I keep catching most of anything
which may slip through during my own use; if any bugs make it past beta and
gamma, I tend to release patches before anyone even else has time to notify
me.  I fix things pre-emptively.  Is it always perfect?  No.  But I try
-way- harder than most people seem to these days.

But that's not really the point.  You don't look at your corporate website
as "software" to be bug-reported by the user in the first place.  If it
were a web service, sure.  If it were SaaS, sure.  But -not- the corporate
website.  That's supposed to be like printing business cards, brochures,
pamphlets, etc.  That's your marketing, and how you present yourself.  You
get it right -before- anyone sees it, when you would have to be rightly
embarrassed.  Even though you have the ability to fix it, you still treat
it like it will be immutable.  To not do so is tantamount to not bothering
to proofread your resume and cover letter, then asking the interviewer to
let you know if they find any mistakes.  -That's not their job-.  Their
job is to pre-emptively kick to the curb the applicants displaying low
quality input.  It's the applicant's job to put their best foot forward
if they expect to be taken seriously.  Likewise with corporate websites.
I've passed over software due to really poor websites which seem like they
were put together by a couple of 11yr-old hobbyists, yet were meant to
sell software which purported to be enterprise-grade.  Sha, right.  Pass,
thanks.

(Full disclosure:  I at one point put my own company website together with
a tool which used a DTP methodology.  That tool used some questionable CSS
which worked fine at the time, but which all browsers eventually broke
upon seeing, some years down the road.  I'm in the process of reworking
my site in WordPress, but simply have not had the time to finish it, and
I started on it a year ago.  It's the product pages which still all need
to be translated.  It is driving me -nuts- that I know there are display
issues on my site, and have been for the last 1.5 years, despite the fact
it's barely used.  If I had the time and energy to finish that off rapidly,
believe me I would.  That said, when the tool I used before was current,
the site worked 100% properly or it wouldn't have gone live at all.  I am a
"to the pixel" layout obsessive, so there's no way I let anything out the
door with faults if I can help it.  It took them a few years for the CSS
weaknesses to reveal themselves in that product, and by then I was screwed.
So I'm painfully aware that my own has issues with the final div heights
on some pages, but it wasn't originally that way, and will be fixed.  I'm
pre-empting snarky comebacks by being up-front about how and when that
happened.  Dud ammunition, given the actual chain of events.  By the way,
avoid Serif WebPlus like the plague.  It now sucks.)

But just...  You know, it's bad enough that the ability to zero-day and
then perpetually patch has screwed up the software industry no end, and
made everyone lazy because, "Hey, we can always fix it after release."  Now
it's bleeding over onto the marketing.  Some days, I really have to ask
if anyone takes enough pride in their work anymore to bother doing things
correctly the first time.  

It truly baffles me that any of this should ever need explanation.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.