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April 12, 2005
Limits
I'm reading a rant list on C|Net called Technology's 10 most inexcusable failures. For one of the items, David Berlind writes:
Imagine if 10 years ago software vendors set themselves on a course to turn error messages into interactive software-repair assistants. Using the error dialog box, you would then be able to catalog the error in a log of your choice, forward it to some central repository (either corporate or with the vendor) and generate a trouble ticket for your support staff. Better yet, maybe you would be able to repair the problem with one click.
I'm imagining the situation right now. New managers working for the vendors would still be promising that software their predecessors promised to deliver 9 1/2 years ago, and junior developers hired to place those fired for not finishing would be cursing their managers' promises as code bloated exponentially with error messages in a vain attempt to account for unexpected conditions the software couldn't account for rendered even simple switches thousands of lines long.
Eventually, people would settle on dumping the entire problem in the hands of even more junior support personnel by automatically generating a contact-product-support URL -- i.e. one click -- for anything stronger than a warning. Encouraged by optimistic though incomplete support readiness training, crowds of customer facing youngers would go cynical overnight, confronted one call after another both with bitter IT staff suspecting unfair tactics on the part of product developers and angered by the wait on the phone, and also with second level support utterly at sea with a body of code devoted almost entirely to message logging, no one in the original development team having stuck around after management knotted the "Human readable messages/One-click resolution" must have millstone around their collective necks.
Posted by Mark at April 12, 2005 09:11 PM