bugs

[Garrett Hylltun]

Scott Kane wrote:
[snip]
> years.  I'm keeping my cool here - but you are talking a load of
> dog waffle.  The crappiest software in existence is coming from
> ISV's (wanna be shareware authors) - the net is full of it - sadly.
> They perform no bug testing, no user focus groups, no market research
> and spend their whole live bitching and moaning about pirates, instead
> of improving their all to often garbage products.  Writing a programming
> compiler and associated IDE and tools can not in any way be compared
> to the trivial applications attempted by ISV's aka shareware authors.
> I wish it was not the case - but it is.  A days downloading and 
> download.com will support this contention.  90% write knock off
> app's (also known as "me too" app's) for tools that clone the likes
> of Winzip and other products and they don't even improve on the
> idea - in fact they ship inferior rot and then cry foul when consumers
> don't buy it.

I must stand corrected to a point.  You are right that there is a lot of 
crap out there... I have seen this myself also.  I should have said 
something to that effect.  One developer that stands out in my memory is 
an author that goes by the name of "Babya".  This one may hold the title 
for the crappiest software ever.  But then another name comes to mind 
for some rock solid software, and that's "Erik Fookes", developer of 
"NoteTab" and "NoteTab Pro".  I have used "NoteTab Pro" for years now. 
Never encountered a bug myself, and I wasn't just a casual user either.

But even with all the crap out there, there's a lot of outstanding 
software from the independents.  There are even freeware apps out there 
that put commercial software to shame.  Check out the "Pricelessware" 
list sometime.

I have come across some of the best software I've ever had from the 
independent developers, and not the commercial developers.  And I've 
seen some seriously bad software from large commercial developers too.

-Garrett