What Could Possibly Be Worse Than Failure?
by in Alex's Soapbox on 2007-02-28Earlier this week, I changed the name of the site to Worse Than Failure. A lot of readers weren’t too happy with the new name and many of you wondered why, of all names, did I choose Worse Than Failure. After all, what could possibly be worse than failure? In lieu of telling a specific story of failure today, I’d like to share my insights as to why there are – and will continue to be – so many spectacular WTFs (as in, for old time’s sake, What-The-F*s) in our industry, and why so many of them are, in fact, worse than failure.
In the almost-three years that I’ve been writing this blog, I have seen some of the most obscene perversions in information technology ever created. Heck, we all have. While quite a number of these disasters can be blamed on amateurish incompetence, so many defy all explanation. It’s as if highly-capable, incredibly-intelligent, and good-natured software engineers got together and said, "Let’s build the worst software ever created!"