Ask HN: What's most important when creating software?

2 points·baccheion··5 comments

Also, how would you the following be ordered (most important to least): clarity, brevity, elegance, correctness, simplicity, speed, robustness, and efficiency? Why?

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There's no way to answer that question in general. It all depends on how the software is going to be used, the goals of those who are developing it, the environment in which it is being developed and probably many other factors.

Correctness is certainly the most important. If the software does the wrong thing, who cares if it's elegant, robust, fast, etc.?

I agree that correctness is usually most important but even that's relative because with the possible exception of some life critical software virtually all software has bugs and a certain bug density is essentially tolerated in the software industry.

Yes, all software has bugs, but some bugs are much more serious than others. For example, if my tax software had a bug that made it install updates very slowly, I might tolerate it. But if it had a bug that caused the wrong numbers to be sent to the IRS, I wouldn't use it no matter how beautiful and fast the software was.

Hopefully, when we make the decision to release software, the bugs we knowingly leave in the product will be merely annoying and not cause harm to the user.

that it's a pleasure, not a chore, to use

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