I remember when…. Never mind. Something starting like that will not go in a good direction. So let use try this again.

Some technical things seem to be getting more difficult. Or I am having less patience with some of the stupidity that we have to deal with to use or develop or work with software. Or I am wrong and everything is working great and it is just me and I am the source of the problems. But I suspect that it is not just me. But it is odd.

Last month, I tried to put up a jira instance on an Ubuntu server that is my personal back-yard and software shed. This should not be hard, yes? I am running MySQL and have been for a long time. I have installed databases and associated stuff many, many times. And I can even connect to my database server remotely. I do not worry over-much about the security of this because my site is used to publish government data that I have re-contextualized. So I am not a bank and I am not doing credit card payments and such. And you need to have remote connectivity to your database enabled to install jira because you go to their web page and point them at your server and say “install there” and they do. If it works. It did not work. So I asked if there was a problem. I could not even get them to understand my question. For example, they had, at hand, lots of docs on how to configure your database to be remotely connectable and they kept sending me that. This was not my issue. Maybe this was the issue for most people sending these random newbie problems, but it was not mine. I gave up.

I recently tried installing bugzilla. I worked, a while back and not for very long, at Mozilla and I know that bugzilla works fine. Wow, perl. CPAN. I had not seen that in a while. But CPAN had some really good ideas and good stuff was done with perl, so let us give this a shot. Well, everything worked great. I had lots of modules to install (why so many? lots of new modules being developed in perl?) but it was going ok. Then I hit the part where the apache connectivity goes and, no, not so much. Search for the error message and there is a lot of not quite what I am seeing here. Never mind. I cannot even get myself to engage.

I ended up finding something. I decided to not worry about whether I knew the name or not and I found a java-based app that required that I:

  • create a new database (30 seconds)
  • put 4 pieces of info in a file (db username, pwd and such) (45 seconds)
  • run a “java” command with a “-jar” flag (2 minutes b/c I actually used the “.sh”) And it just worked and there is an issue tracker/kanban board and why the heck did I have to go down those other rat-holes.

But there seem to be more than a few things that I try to install and I hit some rat-hole. Is it me? It is, at least to some extent. My ADD leads me to this way of learning. I see the big picture quickly, but I can “see” some minor point or “see” something in the documentation and I misunderstand it, but that misunderstanding gets locked into my brain. I can try to pull it out with an ice-pick and, no, I will still have that assumption right there and will trip on that same spot again and again and again.

So I know that I do this. But there is also a talent alongside this. Sometimes there are problems that most people just blithely skate over, for whatever reason. This causes them problems later, but they are perhaps not crippling problems and so the problem does not get recognized or fixed. But I will see the problem and I cannot un-see it. I can try, but, no, I cannot un-see the problem. So I point it out and the room gets really quiet as everyone realizes this thing has shipped for five years with this problem. Sometimes, they will even admit it is a real problem. Sometimes, they will not admit it is a problem but they will fix it. And sometimes, occasionally, they appreciate gettiing notice of the problem. Not often, but it has happened.

So, the question is this. Is software getting worse? People ship things and it says “just do this” and that does not work. What should one do? They often do not document what to do if there are problems. Because there are no problems. “Did you just do this?” is their only response. And I completely lack patience with this.

Obviously my approach to software has changed after being in the industry for a while. But I really do not think it is just me. Just ask yourself how many times you have seen CEOs give demos of software. Does that always work out? What has been the answer to this from the software industry. I know one thing. It seems that there have been a lot less times when you see a CEO give a demo. And that is one solution.