Computer Audio Asylum

RE: Null tests essential as part of the learning process

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fmak

A

In Reply to: RE: Null tests essential as part of the learning process posted by Tony Lauck on December 15, 2009 at 13:48:29

In 'serious' computing, programmers are expected to clearly state what settings mean and why they are there.

With much of music and leisure software, users are expected to 'guess' what settings should be made. And these corporations charge a lot of money for these 'guess me if you can' packages.

This is a sad reflection on IT education and the blame lies in laziness or secrecy when so many readme.txt files tell us nothing insightful about the programs.

I am impresssed by the literature available on HP PCs which is truly informative.

Follow Ups:

RE: Null tests essential as part of the learning process - Jim F. 10:49:11 12/16/09 (0)
> With much of music and leisure software, users are expected
> to 'guess' what settings should be made. And these corporations
> charge a lot of money for these 'guess me if you can' packages.

I strongly suspect that in the case of this particular installation-
default setting, the choice to provide backward-compatibility
with an older version of the program **by default** was deliberately made
to take a bit of heat off telephone support ("Why can't I read
my old Cool Edit files?").

I read someplace recently -- in Joel Spolsky, or maybe in
Raymond Chen's _The New Old Thing_, that the rule of thumb at
Microsoft is that a single support call negates any profit
made by selling the customer that copy of Windows.

It's a balancing act.

And yeah, manuals are often written by people not only not
familiar with the program they're documenting, but not even
familiar with the application domain in question.
(Same with the customer support personnel, of course.
It's a low-level, thankless job.)
Software product quality (or lack thereof) - Tony Lauck 09:05:50 12/16/09 (1)
Sad to say, the "serious" software isn't generally much better than the "leisure" software. Sometimes the same can be said about "safety critical software". From time to time one hears of people being killed because of software bugs in medical software, avionics software, etc...

Some systems defy the limits of human intelligence, so no amount of training or diligence is going to help. The cure is to junk this stuff and start over. (No need to mention the systems in question. We all have our favorite list.) Often junk is shipped despite the better judgment of the engineers on command of managers with the bean counting mentality. (The "engineers" shouldn't go along with this, but most have to feed their families, or some other usual excuse.)

So long as there isn't strict product liability for software this situation will continue. (Were strict product liability to be applied it might be the end of the industry, however.)

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
- RE: Software product quality (or lack thereof) - fmak 09:27:34 12/16/09 (0)
  The laws are there, at least in the UK. Sadly they are not applied wrt to IT. Nevertheless, it should be possible to get a refund on software that does not fit the purpose for which it is supplied by a retailer.
  
  When I started scientific computing, it was practice to test each subroutine properly before integrating them. Even after integration, it was practice to hand calaculate representatitive samples to ensure that the answers were correct.
  
  I remember spending a week to 10 days plotting out hand calculated results to verify computer programs. Sadly, few seem to do it these days and I know of PhD failures because finite element computations were not checked aginstof other methods thru estimation or from lack of a common sense assessment of the results.
  
  In audio, two of things that should be avoided with fast signals are curve fitting or sample estimation (very difficult to do accurately with random waveforms) and triggering on the basis of the rise or fall of a near square wave (dac operation). Unfortunately both have been adopted as facts of life. Hence the difficulties with digital audio reproduction and the cost of truly high end systems.

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