Notes for software companies

If you're going to develop a database application, for pity's sake include sort and find features.

Don't get halfway through translating the helpfiles from Dutch to English and stop, hoping no-one will notice.  I noticed, and I can't read Dutch.

Software should be released when it is complete and ready to be used.  It should not escape through the door at a run with a broken leash behind it.

Those sort and find features?  Would have saved hours of my time today and last week.  Seventeen hundred unordered lines to check is painfully inefficient.

If there's a problem with one of those seventeen hundred lines, it would be really useful if you could highlight the line, rather than leave me to wonder which of over a hundred changed lines you objected to.

Sort.  Find.  How could you possibly overlook this?

Happily the piece of cruft in question has been phased out in favour of something with sort and find features, but an alarming tendency to crash if someone sneezes.  (Read the Jargon File to translate the geektalk of hackers into English.  Cruft is one eloquent example of geekspeak.)