Where Are The Flying Cars?

I was fine when 1984 came and went without living up to the future predicted by George Orwell. The dark dystopian regimented future was not so much to my liking. The passing of 2001 (as in 2001, A Space Odyssey) was more upsetting as decades had passed since we landed on the moon and the prospect for interplanetary manned space flight was not even close to reality. I felt clearly upset in 2015 (as depicted in Back to the Future II) given the lack of hoverboards, self-lacing Nike shoes, and flying cars. Now in 2020, I’ve decided to give up on my futuristic wish list and just go back to basics.

All I Want for Christmas is Software that Works

It’s 2020 – we have smartphones with computing capability thousands of times more powerful than the computers I worked in the 1970s. We have moved steadily towards becoming a network-dependent worldwide society. There are regular missions to Mars and beyond, machines that can decipher the human genome, and computers that beat the best humans at chess, Jeopardy, and GO. Yet, too much software is still crap! There I said it. Software development at the consumer level is barely better than it was 50 years ago, and in some cases, it’s worse. How do I know?

The Proof is in the Error Messages

When I learned to program, one guiding principle was to ensure that the software failed gracefully. We didn’t know much about being user-centric, so failing gracefully was more for the developer or support person than for the user. For example, the infamous Windows blue screen of death is not a graceful failure — it upsets the user, doesn’t provide any clear, actionable information to the user or support person, and often results in the loss of whatever is going on. A graceful fail might be one where the error message is understandable, the recovery is straightforward, and the development team gets helpful information on what caused the error.

Error messages such as “Fatal Error – OOPS!” are not helpful. This is unacceptable in 2020! I attribute it to programmer laziness and the rush to get software that’s not ready for the public out into the market. For those of us who cut our eyeteeth on Microsoft releasing software long before it was ready and using us to help refine it, we can tolerate this. For younger Millennials and Gen-Zers, their attitude is to just move on to some other app. Software quality matters!

This is not a broad-based indictment of all software developers. There are a lot of great examples of quality software in the consumer space, but there are also too many shoddy apps, and those developers — you know who you are — need to pay attention!

I’m embarrassed to be writing this critique in 2020 given where I hoped the world would be by now from a technological standpoint, but this year has surprised everybody on so many levels that there’s no reason software should be exempt.

I still believe that computing can do more to help personal productivity and raise the intelligence bar for all of humanity but that’s a topic for another post. All I want now is for all this crap to work the first time and maybe for there to be some flying cars! What are your favorite examples of technology fails?