Why Software Sucks:
...and What You Can Do About It
Today`s software sucks. There`s no other good way to say it. It`s unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It`s unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it`s hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations.
It`s no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that`s the case and, more importantly, why it doesn`t have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that`s a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you`re already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software—how you, as an informed consumer, don`t have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out.
As you might expect from the book`s title, Dave`s expose is laced with humor—sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You`ll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You`ll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer`s face. But Dave hasn`t written this book just for laughs. He`s written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery—that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn`t.