Half-baked is an accusation levelled at software; many complain that software is released before it is ready, and complain that the computer industry pushes products to market before adequate testing has been completed. Is this accusation fair? Sure, if you are willing to overlook the first 50 years of automobile, radio, television, plastics, and nearly every other major piece of technology.
I seem to remember my grandfather (who worked for Bell Labs) refusing to buy a color television until they "got the bugs out." Well, I suppose there are still bugs in it - just don't wear red or houndstooth on television, in case you don't know what I mean - but it's good enough to be useful (please, you know what I mean) to most people most of the time. So what about those people who bought it when the technology was new? Were they victims or pioneers? I suppose the answer to that has more to do with the buyer than the technology. Some people ignore the signposts that they aren't in Kansas any more and travel beyond their zone of technological comfort, and feel victimized when the flying monkeys come (did I take that metaphor too far?). But that's no reason to limit all travel to Kansas.
Of course, the more astute point out that computer technology has had it's fifty years. Hey, if they can keep extending copyrights indefinitely, you can cut the computer industry some slack here. The average home computer today is one of the most complex human inventions ever. But the problems of engineering quality are simple in the labratory; outside there, control over the product is fought for on a different plane. If the computer is a car, then it keeps breaking down because there is a battle going on for control of the engine and its parts. Software makers are free to leave serious flaws in or in fact intentionally cause flaws in the products of others, because consumers don't understand what's going on under the hood. Companies like Microsoft want to weld the hood shut, they secretly put random voltage spikers in the electrical system to short out non-Microsoft spark plugs, etc. The customer is just a grunt on the front line of this battle.
The software parts inside never wear out or break down, but this longevity will introduce new problems - and new ways for companies to use their customers as the cannon fodder - until the software that runs computers takes on its new aspect in the networked world. Such code is no longer in its own artificial universe. It becomes a social creature that must survive and interact with others. Which means that it will finally fall, in the public mind, under the spell of ethics, etiquette, and social rules. Code that ran fine in isolation - or in the absence of competition - will start to look wrong in it's new environment, and the the public will tire of the umpteenth I-Love-You-Melissa-Kournikova virus. Perhaps then, and only then, they will look at what's going on under the hood and start demanding that their software follow the same rules as the rest of their world.
