Douglas Crockford on Software Quality

When Douglas Crockford talks about Software Quality, you should listen. If you are involved in writing software and need to understand why software is difficult, or if you are planning a software project, you need to watch this presentation.

Includes such gems as "No rational person can do software", "Programmers don't understand how they spend their time", and "If you took all the code you wrote over the past year, you could probably type it into the computer in one day." One of my favorites: "Programming is a social activity."

Oh, and mad props to Crockford for drawing a parallel between building software and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Not only is it a funny movie, it's one of my Mom's favorites. While Crockford found many apt parallels, he unfortunately was wrong about one. Software construction is not nearly as funny as this movie.

Partially related to this presentation is Joel's article on Five Ways to Fail a Software Project.

Study your craft and improve it.

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