Linux starts to look more like Windows, Windows starts to look more like Macintosh, Macintosh starts to look more like a lollypop and yet is the software that runs on these systems actually getting better? Here's the point of view of an admittedly non-technical reporter who points out the divide that separates techies from users [The Washington Post].

To overcome this cultural gap between techies and computer users, Mann concludes, tech folk "would need both technical and interpersonal skills."

It is a very difficult task to balance the "needs" of computer users from the technical challenges of meeting those needs. For one, the underlying systems on top of which applications are written continue to change. This forces developers to regularly throw away perfectly good tools for ones that do little more than the old tools. Secondly, the attempts to build higher level frameworks and component libraries that could potentially simplify the development process have never fully succeeded. The problem is much harder than people, even developers, often realize. Third, the desire to produce tight, simple applications usually gets overridden by the demands of end-users for more and better. The result is short timelines to pack more and more features into a release while simultaneously making it unfeasible for developers to catch all of the bugs.

There is little doubt that simple to use, bug free software would be a plus, but is that really what people want? Case in point: I have recently started using AbiWord on my laptop installed with Linux. I found it to be very simple to use and free of bugs. I decided to install it on my Windows 2000 box and found that it was a least as good for my needs as Microsoft Word. Now, AbiWord provides 100% of the features that your average user needs from a word processor. Yet, nobody is really interested in switching to a simple application like this when a more feature rich tool is available. Never mind that they would probably be more productive with the simpler to use tool. It must be part of human nature to want the biggest and the best tool available. So, until you can convince people that simpler tools are good, or even better, software will continue to be bloated and buggy. 10:44:56 AM