Thanks WinOSCentral for this one.
We would not accept a new house with sloping floors, holes in the ceilings, nails sticking out of the walls, and an outrageous price -- even if it minimally met basic needs. We would not be content with the explanation: "Well, it has a front door, which usually opens. You can find your way to the kitchen, but watch out for the nails. The holes in the ceiling don"t really leak. And sure it ran 300% over budget, but houses often do." Rather than crooked floors, the software manifestations of poor design are redundancy, unnecessary performance bottlenecks, intertwined bugs that cannot be fixed, impenetrable code, and other ills. Unfortunately, we often accept software in just such a state.
What are your thoughts on this?