Extreme Software

I cannot agree with the premise that the problem with software is programmers ("Everyone's a Programmer," TR November 2003). We know how to write good software-it just takes too long, and it's too expensive for the rather trivial consumer products that currently drive the industry. With product cycles shorter than a year and profit margins low or nonexistent, programmers are not permitted to write good code. Now the solution proposed in your article is to get rid of programmers and replace them with machines to do the programming. These programming machines have been touted as the solution now for years, but they can produce coding errors on a grander scale than mediocre human programmers. When such tools finally appear, and accountants and insurance specialists can write their own software, I think we will discover just how bad software can really get.

E. G. Merrill
Daglish, Australia