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We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Many years ago, I was asked to help a customer with a problem they were having. I don't remember the details, and they aren't important to the story anyway, but as I was investigating one of their crashes, I started to wonder why they were even doing it.

I expressed my concerns to the customer liaison. "Why are they writing this code in the first place? The performance will be terrible, and it'll never work exactly the way they want it to."

The customer liaison confided, "Yeah, I thought the same thing. But this is a feature they're adding to the next version of their product. The product is so far behind schedule, they've been cutting features like mad to get back on track. But they can't cut this feature. It's the last one left!"

Published Friday, April 11, 2008 7:00 AM by oldnewthing
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Comments

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 10:29 AM by David Walker

No wonder they were so far behind schedule.  It sounds like they didn't know much about software design (or even how to write code).

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 10:33 AM by mastmaker

What Raymond forgot to add:

Pre-emptive snarky comment: You don't happen to be talking about Vista by any chance, do you?

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 10:39 AM by Name required

<deletes snarky comment from Comments edit box>

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 11:04 AM by Bryan

The snarky comment could have been:

Vista didn't have any features to cut in the first place!

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 1:15 PM by Peter Ritchie

hahaha, I've sure you have lots of anecdotes like this.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 1:26 PM by FusionGuy

Why is everyone so hard on Vista.  Jeez.  It's like everyone and their brothers jumped on an anti-Vista bandwagon and it's not cool to be an outsider anymore.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 2:02 PM by Beanholio

It doesn't seem to me that anyone is bashing on Vista--they're assisting Raymond with his snarky comment game.  These responses are all in-line with what's been snarkified in the past.  Pre-emptive snarky comment: Snarkified isn't a word.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 2:24 PM by John

So, instead of everyone talking about the Nitpicker's corner they are talking about the Pre-emptive snarky comment.  Why even bother with it?

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 2:25 PM by Cooney

Snarkified is too a word - it has a specific meaning that most users agree on, therefore it's a word

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 2:36 PM by DriverDude

Raymond, you really should name names - so we can redirect our snarky comments at Vendor Nameless rather than Vista.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 2:42 PM by Jim

Back to original story, it's hard to reconcile the vision of management and the reality. The situation forces people to add those useless features. Update keep us in the job and we are continuing garbage in and garbage out.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 3:32 PM by Ulric

Seen it. Caused by lack of product management decision, and the developers running loose on their pet projects, as they are left on their own.

After a few months or even a year of procrastination, in panic, the company needs to begin to cut down all the runaway projects to ship something stable.

Now comes the painful part of making this a product someone will want to buy.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 3:34 PM by score

seen it. paid tons of money for no features at the end of the project. hooray!

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 5:08 PM by Mango

<snark>

Raymond omitted the name of the feature: WinFS.

</snark>

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 5:10 PM by Marc

Surely programmers depend in part at least, on the upgrade cycle.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 6:41 PM by Mark Sowul

Re: snarkified

Preemptive clever comment: it's a perfectly cromulent word.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 6:44 PM by Cooney

> Surely programmers depend in part at least, on the upgrade cycle.

Sometimes we provide actual value - not everybody gets to strongarm the industry.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 7:03 PM by Triangle

I hereby give this thread the 100% genuine snark stamp of approval.☼

☼ Thread may contain as little as 0.02% snark. See back of package for content information.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Friday, April 11, 2008 8:40 PM by Customer

Triangle:  As a discerning customer, I am concerned about my snark content intake.  I would like to know more about the snark in this product.  However, I am unable to find the back of the package.   Please advise.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 2:06 AM by Timmy Jose

Sounds just like a day in the average "Technology" company where logic, common sense and dedication are words as alien as manners to the average human.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 12:06 PM by Ultrano

Hahaha, sounds like the opposite of where I work - when we've delayed a bit too much, we start adding more features than planned.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 12:36 PM by Xepol

How do you cut all the features but 1 and still run behind exactly?

Worse, how do you call it a "next version" with a straight face?

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:13 PM by Christian

It would be great if you could include a little bit of details how this process works: How can a real core developer of a MS product group work together with shaby companies (like e.g. large companies which I may not mention here, e.g. bad virus scanners or media players... Or maybe they are not so large companies?) that seem to have really bad programmers and help them out or answer customer questions?

Are this all just elevated premium MS product support cases?

[I don't know how it works. Often I don't even know the name of the company I'm working with. (I could probably find out just by asking, but I never ask.) It goes through the liaison. -Raymond]

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 3:06 PM by Nick

They obviously need to implement some Speed-Up loops!

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Speedup-Loop.aspx

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 3:30 PM by Me

That could have easily made the frontpage on thedailywtf.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Saturday, April 12, 2008 6:30 PM by Triangle

"Worse, how do you call it a "next version" with a straight face?"

That's marketings job.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Sunday, April 13, 2008 12:27 AM by Brandon Paddock

Xepol -

It could have tons of bug fixes.  I don't remember what new feature Windows 98 Second Edition had, but I remember it being a nice upgrade in terms of reliability / performance.

I don't even know what new features Office 2003 had versus the one before it.  Unless "working better" was a new feature.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Sunday, April 13, 2008 5:36 AM by USB!

Windows 98 Second Edition = USB drives support

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Sunday, April 13, 2008 7:50 AM by CommenterParamExA

@USB: It also had regressions and MSIE 5 (instead of 4) making it a bit more bloated. I used 1st edition before Win2k SP2 came out, those were the days. Win2k needed more RAM but it performed great, was really stable (compared to win98) and didn't suffer from the 'rot' so I never had to reinstall. I never got IIS to work though, 2003 is a lot better in this area.

# Ethics?

Sunday, April 13, 2008 2:15 PM by ConcernedCustomer

So, essentially they're pulling a bait-and-switch on their customers.  Claiming some new feature in order to convince their customers to buy the new product, only to not actually deliver that feature in any usable form.

I wouldn't want to work for a company like that.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Sunday, April 13, 2008 6:10 PM by cmov

Will there be another installment of "Psychic Debugging" next week? That'd be terrific! Not that I don't like this post of course...

You're a really professional blogger, if only you were paid professionally :'(

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Monday, April 14, 2008 1:55 AM by Robbie Mosaic

Now I understand why Knuth version his TeX system by 3.1415926... Because this means a newer version should be more near the perfection, rather than with a new feature.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Monday, April 14, 2008 3:56 AM by Bulletmagnet

Re: TeX

It's also the perfect excuse for never being finished. I ought to propose this versioning system for all our products :)

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Monday, April 14, 2008 2:40 PM by kokomo

"We can't cut that; it's our last feature"

Uh oh. Deja vu. I'm sure I've heard this before...

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:27 AM by CatG

this one should be on DailyWTF...

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:00 PM by Marc K

@Brandon Paddock

AFAIK, Win98SE was an upgrade you couldn't get.  I remember it only being available to OEMs with no upgrade path for the poor soul that had Win98 first edition.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 8:42 AM by Stephen Jones

Win 98 SE was a fairly good operating system. Which was presumably why MS made you buy ME instead.

Win 2K was the real improvement (all we've had since then have been service patches of varying degrees of reliability) but there was a lot of hardware it wouldn't work with.

# re: We can't cut that; it's our last feature

Thursday, April 17, 2008 2:28 PM by Yuhong Bao

"Which was presumably why MS made you buy ME instead."

I don't think so, I in fact don't fundamentally think that Me is worse than 98.

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