Joe's Jottings

Jottings Number 55, Reply B, by Joe Podolsky and Bruce Karney:

From: uunet!HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com!JOE_PODOLSKY

Date: Wed, 15 May 96 17:05:22 -0700

     Good stuff.  Thanks, Bruce.

     Joe

     P.S.  _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ is probably my 
     favorite quality book.  It was originally printed with covers of many 
     colors.  Mine is kind of a San Jose Shark's aquamarine.

In Masa's message, he wrote that one difference between software and film
might be that software is more easily copied. While this is true in the
bit-for-bit sense, nothing is more common in film and TV to reshoot the
same story with minor variations: "boy-meets-girl, they don't get along but
are thrown together by circumstances, face danger together and realize they
are in love, face one more peril together, all ends happily" -- haven't we
all encountered this "high level design spec" a few zillion times?

Why is it, though, that sequels and re-makes in movies are usually viewed
as inferior to "the original," while in the software industry customers are
usually ready to drop the old and buy the new at a moment's notice?

Part of the answer is that there is a lot of integrity in a truly creative
work that simply doesn't seem able to exist in copies. It's hard to define
this "integrity", or "quality." Think of "The African Queen" with Bogart
and Hepburn. Can you imagine a remake (Ver. 2.0 in computerese) that could
be better?

I suppose you could imagine improving the movie by adding some great new
scenes and inserting them into the original, making a "better" African
Queen, but I don't think customers would buy tickets to see it. If some
did buy tickets to see AQ 2.0, I can't imagine continued demand to see AQ
3.0... Though different, these subsequent versions would not be widely
perceived as being of significantly higher quality than the original.

This is another way that artistic expression differs from the expression of
utility that exists in most software applications. In Robert Pirsig's book
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" he writes at length about the
difference between quality and utility, and describes a world from which
the concept of "quality" been subtracted. Among other examples, he writes
that everyone would eat only basic grains and a few vegetables, since the
desire for flavor and texture are based on perceptions of quality. It's a
bland, bland, world when quality is subtracted.

So, I would propose that it is useful to define "software quality" not
simply as "fitness for use," but using Pirsig's definition as well.
Quality software is zesty, tasty, delicious, desirable stuff. How does one
go about developing software of this kind? Go back to Joe's original
posting, I think the ingredients are there.

Cheers,
Bruce Karney
Corp. Ed.
857-7146

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