Very interested in the current thread on software reliability, something i've been pondering over for a while now. not much to say about it that others haven't already said. for me the sad thing is that so few people (particularly in the commercial arena) put quality so low down on their list of priorities, and seem to get away with it because low quality has now become the norm. i had a picture tacked to my fridge for a long while of the mechanism inside an old safe. what appealed to me about it was that aswell as designing and making a functional mechanism, the makers had gone to the trouble of engraving the parts with incredibly intricate designs, designs that unless you took the thing to pieces you wouldn't normally see. this meant pride to me. pride in your work. pride knowing that you've done something well.
i'm not saying that the coders (sysadmins, etc) today necessarily take any less pride in what they do, but that they so often don't have a choice. and that this lack of choice is imposed on them by a system that is more interested in making obscene amounts of money than making products that work.

folks here may also be interested in this, an excellent article that apeared on /. a while back about the people who code software for the space shuttle.

and in other news, i've had a job offer! picked out of nine candidates apparently. saw the company for a second time yesterday, met with two system architechts. tried my best to answer their questions, but came away feeling like i hadn't really impressed them, so the offer this morning was a very nice surprise. i now have the weekend to think about it. my feeling at the moment is yes.

got to fly, the palm is chirping at me. "Outage scheduled". OS patches on a solaris box, i have to make sure the web stuff comes back up again. then meeting S at the gym. should be home for 9 if we're lucky.

l8r.