mikhail.barg's blog

Are there any really 'perfect' software at all?
By mikhail.barg, 13 years ago, In English

There's a question I've been asking myself for some time already. It is "Can you name a program that you totally satisfied with?" After reading "Software vs. Hardvare" post in VC15 blog, I came to this thought again.

What's kinda depressing me, is that I cannot remember a program that I could say to be so good that it does what it is meant to do and does not give me any frustration/dissatisfaction in any way.. Maybe there are some games that are made really nice, but what's about not-gaming software?

So I'd like to address this question to the whole community here: "Can you name a program that you may frankly say to be flawless?"


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13 years ago, # |
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Interesting question. It's strange that nobody hasn't provided any examples yet. I'm writing this comment a few hours later after having read the post. I expected some fans to post comments like these: "Linux is perfect, it can do everything I need", "I am fond of Vim. Not only it is a good text editor, it can also play chess with you" and so on.

But from the other hand I think nobody could say that some software is flawless. In "The Mythical man-month" by Frederick Brooks it is said: "... the programmer delivers satisfaction of a user need rather than any tangible product. And both the actual need and the user's perception of that need will change as programs are built, tested, and used". I understand it as follows. Once you started using a good program it fits you well. It has all the necessary functionality you lacked before. After some time you get used to the program and start willing it to have more features because "the perception of your need" has changed.

For example, suppose you want to write C++ source code. You start typing it in Windows notepad. It is perfectly capabale because it is intended for writing text! Having written some lines of code you get frustrated - there is no auto indentation and it's very inconvenient to do it manually. So you move to Notepad++ (for instance). Great! It auto-indents the text and, more over, it has syntax highlighting. Hardly anything exists better than it!

With the code growing its getting awkward to navigate it by mouse scrolling or pressing "Page Up"/"Page down". You need some code navigation tool (Does anybody know if Notepad++ has the one?). You switch to another editor.

Then you will want to split the code in multiple files and manage them, compile it, execute, debug, refactor and so on. So you will end up with an IDE. Having started with simple text writing and a small program the evolution of your needs has led you to complex software with a wide variety of functions. And by no means it's going to satisfy you fully for a very long period of time.

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  • 13 years ago, # ^ |
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    Well, you kinda right and wrong at the same time, I think. You are right that if we keep wanting more and more from a single program, it will never fulfill our expectations.

    Still I think it's reasonable to expect the program to be flawless at what it was supposed to do. E.g. Notepad was not supposed to be an IDE, so there's no need to blame it to be a good IDE, right? As far as I understand, Notepad was supposed to provide some simple and quick way to enter/read simple texts. Still  I can't say that it is doing it as good as it should be...

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13 years ago, # |
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Hm, I remembered a program that I'm totally satisfied with. Media Player Classic. According to my needs it plays video very well.
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13 years ago, # |
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One more almost flawless program I can mention is priPrinter. It is a great virtual printer and does its job very well. It has some problems with PDF creation but it is not related to the program's primary use.
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13 years ago, # |
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Are we intentionally practicing our English, by the way?

I bet that almost all winning programs on Hugi Compo are "perfect". I myself once spent about a hour to write similar "perfect program" - it was about 20 bytes long (compiled code) and since so, there surely just was no place for errors. The goal was to invent self-replicating code which permanently cycles through 64k segment of memory in x86 real mode.

Besides such specific programs, I think, question of "perfect" software is senseless.
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13 years ago, # |
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Well, I can name one of such programs. It is Far Manager, which perfectly does not only its job (to manage files), but serves me as good editor (with syntax highlighting of course), ftp/sftp/samba client, task manager (yes, it's simpler to kill bunch of processes via "Process List" plugin) and maybe terminal (although it simply allows access to cmd.exe's command line.
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  • 13 years ago, # ^ |
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    I thought of FAR as well, but as I'm not using it myself, I cannot judge it. Still, are you honest in saying it's that good so you have totally no complains on it?
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    • 13 years ago, # ^ |
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      The only my complaint on FAR is that it doesn't have analog for Linux :-)
      By the way, I don't know if it is possible to write something like FAR for Linux (the problem, to my mind is hotkeys - there are too much of them in FAR (that's the biggest point for using it)), but Linux handles keyboard differently from Windows. For example, in Windows it is possible to have language switch binded to Ctrl+Shift and also have working Ctrl+Shift+Tab combination (one tab back in modern browsers). In Linux when I set up Ctrl+Shift for language switch, Ctrl+Shift+Tab stopped working.

      P.S. I personally don't blame Linux for that. My opinion is that any OS has its advantages and disadvantages, and it is silly to say, that one rocks and other sucks.
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  • 13 years ago, # ^ |
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    For me one big disadvantage of FAR is absence of tabs like in Total Commander. Moreover, since it works in text mode it doesn't have image previewing via Ctrl+Q which is sometimes useful for me. And due to all the advantages you mentioned I use both FAR and TC.
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    • 13 years ago, # ^ |
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      I think this is one more example of different expectations. I myself rarely need image previewing so I don't mind working in text mode.
      And about tabs - I just start several copies of FAR simultaneously. In spite the fact, that FAR starts up mometarily, it's not a big problem to have several FAR's opened :-)
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