In my Scientific American column this month I railed against software companies' attitude that we, the public, are willing to serve as their unpaid beta testers. In an age when they can update software over the Internet, why should they knock themselves out cleaning up the code in time for version 1.0? That said, writing perfect software is probably impossible. I'm often told that no software is completely bug-free. Maybe, then, we should have some empathy for the companies who put out huge, ambitious, million-code-line software monsters that turn out to have show-stopping bugs.
Image: Writing perfect software is probably impossible. Credit: Iorsh via Wikimedia Commons
