Leader: Don?t let the bad bugs bite

Software bugs in critical safety systems can be the difference between life and death. Fly-by-wire passenger aircraft and even the new generation of huge roller-coasters like the Blackpool Pepsi Max have enormous amounts of code which has to work right first time or lives are at risk. Yet the many separate teams of programmers in the IT industry are still not able to write software that works right first time ? and that is just not good enough.

In addition, dealers and Vars have had enough of the time that is wasted when customers find out that new releases and upgrades just will not work with existing systems.

But what amazes me is that software developers ? and not just the big ones ? are releasing versions of browsers which are just not safe to use. It does not do business confidence in the Web any good when stories such as this week?s about Microsoft?s Internet Explorer bugs get out. And of course Netscape has done the same.

Microsoft acknowledges that a security flaw in the latest version of its browser allows hackers to set up Web sites which could be destructive to users of Explorer. This exposes another small flaw in Microsoft?s attitude to the world in which it lives. I am not a Microsoft basher, but why was the company in such hurry to release code without rigorously checking it?

I am not suggesting that all commercial code should be of the same order as critical-safety-systems. That would be absurd. But for the sake of the small to medium-sized dealer and Var I make the following plea: please try to get it right quicker. We know all software houses release bummers ? on page 66, Peg Associates chairman Colin Parnell tells how an unreliable version of Pegasus IX turned into a disaster for Pegasus. But the time consumed by dealing with bad code, supplied in good faith by a dealer, eats steadily into a small company?s resources.

There is also, in the age of the internet, another bad dream out there in cyberspace. Spotty-faced hackers ? and I have met them ? are still out there with their infantile missions to destroy corporate life on Earth. A little more care is called for from all vendors who must be mightily embarrassed every time one of these slimebags drags them into the limelight.