NIST Estimates Sloppy Coding Costs $60 Billion/Year

An anonymous reader submits: "Computerworld is reporting on a government study just released that software bugs are costing the U.S. economy an estimated $59.5 billion each year, with more than half of the cost borne by end users and the remainder by developers and vendors. Better testing could allegedly cut that by one-third."

Obvious joke

[Violet Null]

It originally only cost the economy $6 a year, but there was an unfortunate rounding error in the code that figured out the total cost...

Re:Costing the U.S. economy?

[zulux]

Fixing mailbox bugs in Outlook alone cover my car payments.

OTOH

[Lucas Membrane]

Other costs that America finds affordable:

Football pools -- $241 billion/year

Alcoholism -- $1533 billion/year

Drugs -- $800 billion/year

Coffee breaks -- $526 billion/year

Bathroom time -- $715 billion/year

Krispy Kreme Donuts -- $445 billion/year

Software company lawyers -- $440 billion/year

Neckties -- $211 billion/year

Slashdot -- $688 /year

Offset Piracy?

[cloudscout]

So does this $60 billion offset the amount of money that the software industry claims they lose to software pirates?

How much money do software pirates lose by using illegal copies of sloppily coded software?

As a game developer...

[Dixie_Flatline]

How much money do MY bugs cost? Do fatal bugs in my code actually RETURN productivity to the workforce? Do bugs in my code actually make money for the US economy?

Re:Not just "sloppy coding"

[SirSlud]

This is why software, by law, should explode like an atom bomb when a sigfault occurrs. ;)

.. if we were developing bridges, etc, you'd see alot more caution and listening on the part of management and achitects (nevermind that for *some* reason, more managers in the engineering biz are .. gasp, actually engineers!) if there were physical costs to buggy software, rather than (mostly) economic costs.

Anyhow, I'm glibly musing, but for the record, I totally agree with you.

Doesn't cost me that much

[AintTooProudToBeg]

Sloppy coding earns me approx. $31.75/hr!

Back of the envelope calculation

[washirv]

US Population: approx 0.25Bn
Cost of Windows XP: $200
Total cost: $50Bn
Yeah sounds about right

In further news....

[timeOday]

experts estimate that friction costs the economy $200 billion per year.

so the BSA owes us?

[fermion]

1. This article implies that bugs cost the end user around 30 Billion.

2. The BSA tells us that piracy costs the idustry about 11 biliion.

As far as I can tell, the software industry owes us around 19 Billion in refunds.

Isn't playing with fake statistics wonderful?

Re:Sloppy Coding, Gaming, and OSes

[Anonymous Coward]

Because all operating systems are written by programmers, I assume that any operating system is much smarter than me. Thus, any good operating system should try to outsmart me by restricting my options at every turn. Linux, like all versions of Unix, is lousy at restricting my options because at the command line virtually any operation can be performed with ease. (For example, 'rm -rf /win' could 'delete an entire mounted directory, with no popup window warnings whatsoever.)

I'm proud to say that there is no such danger in XP. Windows pop up when I want to make a change, and then more pop up to ask if I'm sure I want the change. Thankfully, Windows XP looks after my computer's well-being by occasionally switching configuration settings from the way I want them to what the OS programmers think they might probably ought to be. Boy, I'm just impressed with how smart they are. Once I learned to live with whatever the default settings are on any new hardware I install, I can't say the number of hours I have saved.

I use that spare time to reboot my Windows XP machine multiple times a day. Technical support personnel recommend that I do it regularly-- kind of like brushing my teeth. To help remind me of this necessity, windows pop up to tell me to reboot whenever I make a configuration change. By now my machine is minty fresh, I figure.

There is no such useful rebooting in a Linux system. It is as reliable as the sunrise, with uptimes in weeks, months and years. Virtually no configuration change requires a reboot, to boot. Imagine all that plaque in the computer. Gross!

In XP I am prevented from making dangerous fundamental configuration changes unless I use a special "registry editor". I have found it so useful to have this separate editor that I hope in future versions they go all the way and supply a separate editor for each file on the disk-- in that way windows could pop up at every keystroke to warn me that changing any line in the file I am editing could cause the system to not run properly. If this were only the case, people would finally learn that it is best to just stick with the mouse and they would be freed of the need to constantly move their hands back to the keyboard. (If one stops to think about it, the mouse is a much better device to use than the keyboard. Ever hear of someone getting carpal tunnel syndrome from a mouse? No. It's comfortable and ergonomic. Like Morse code devices. That's how long distance communication started, after all.)

Linux, by contrast, requires no special editor to change configuration files. The fact that there is no "registry" in Linux allows the abomination of using any text editor whatsoever to do the configuration. Can you believe that configuration files are usually stored clear text? Talk about dangerous!

I am also happy to report that I have experienced no truth to the rumor that Windows disks become corrupt after improper shutdowns. Indeed, I have been forced to improperly shutdown the machine innumerable times after it locks up, and I have no apparent problems to report regarding the disk. No such claim can be made for Linux. They say something about lack of data points. Excuses are all I ever seem to hear from the Linux crowd.

By sheer size alone, Windows XP beats Linux hands down. It is so much bigger, it is _obvious_ that it is better. Why would you want a small OS with the large disks and RAM sizes we have these days? For this reason alone, I heartily recommend Windows as a way to maximize resource utilization. Your CPU and disk will constantly be pegged to the limit, the way god intended. The Linux kernel and drivers accounts for only about 750KB. Why, even the Microsoft Win16 subsystem uses more space than that.

It is no surprise that Windows XP costs $300 on the retail market and Linux doesn't cost anything. People know what they want, and they want Windows XP. Because Linux is free, that means it's basically worthless. The same goes for all the development tools, remotable GUIs, and applications, which all cost money for Windows (i.e., are worth something) and free for Linux (worthless!).

Installing software is very easy in Windows XP. I usually slip in CDs without even reading instructions or warnings, and just double click on whatever window pops up. There is no need to read anything or touch the keyboard. (Did I mention that I hate that thing?) Well, OK, I have learned the hard way the machine locks up if I don't take the time to close all other applications.

Linux, by contrast, requires typing on the keyboard to get anything to install at all. And you always have to know the NAME of program you want to install. For example, in Slackware, you have to type "pkgtool" to install a program. Linux needs to get with the 21st century!

Windows XP follows the DOS convention of putting \r\n at the end of every line of a text file. While this is only a mild concern because of the relative rarity of text files on Windows machines these days-- thank god--it helps to differentiate between the text files and the other files. Sadly, Linux makes no distinction between text and other files.

If I legitimately purchase Windows XP, I can call Microsoft customer support to get help with my problems. After a short hold time of an hour or so, they always help me. Ever since I told them that I was dual booting to Linux, they were able to flag my account and now each time I call even the entry level support personnel I am connected to say that Linux is the source of my problems. Everyone seems to agree that Linux is no good. The more I listen, the more I'm impressed with the knowledge of the support staff there.

By contrast, in Linux, all I have is stockpiles of resources and documentation that I would actually have to read in order to understand. Sure, I could obtain Linux support from a commercial organization, but they would probably just tell me I have to use a text editor to fix up my system.

In the end, I have no need for that old computer donkey Unix. I don't need to run big Unix tasks, after all. I refuse to become one of those a bug-eyed computer users, that's for sure. As soon as I can keep Windows XP from crashing for long enough, I'm going to delete my Linux partition, i.e., the equivalent of moving it to the recycle bin, saying that I'm sure, emptying the recycle bin, and again saying that I'm sure I want to empty it.

TibbonZero wrote:

Everyone knows that today you need more Harddrive space than ever. That is a fact.

However, I think that alot of that harddrive space is wasted on sloppy coding. At one point, hard drive space was so expensive, that you couldn't afford to have sloppy and inefficnat programs. 8mb of memory was standard, you didn't have 512mb to mess with and leak to. Look at your OS even. Windows 95 fit onto 30mb or so. You could sqeeze it even more if you started deleting things that weren't needed (paint, wordpad, etc...)
Now, look at your WinME or WinXP install. I just did a clean install of XP Pro, and it's taking up 1,082,413,755 bytes (about a gig). Yea, that's a bit much.
Ok, I will give it to you, WinXP Pro has more features and functionality than 95, however is it 34x the features and functionality? Is my computer 34x better, or have 34x more applications and programs that I use? No!!!

I think that this code has been bloated to hell. At one point running DOS/Win3.1 and even NT 3.51, I knew what 90% of the files on my computer were, when they were put there, and what they were for. Now, who knows what 'adsmw.dll' does? (Ok, I know one of you guys probably know, but...)

Also, they haven't optimzed anything, or made anything faster. Win95 could run on a 486 great. WinXP choaks on a 300PII with 64mb. Again, we have gotten more features, but for a system to run smoothly do we need 10-20 times the processing power to make it run well? I think that's absurd. Again, we have came far, but dont' tell me that it couldn't be faster with current hardware.

Linux isn't free from this either. Again we have more features now, but look at the requirements of Redhat 5.2 to 7.3, they have gone up ALOT. And now its THREE CDS!!! That's even beating MSFT. We have alot of programs on linux, but come on, that's crazy. No you don't need all that stuff, but the size of the "Standard" install has gone up dramatically.

Now on to games. Let's take Ultima Online. I remember in the Alpha test and Beta test, a 486 DX/4 was more that enough. I ran it on a Pentium 90, it worked great. Now the system requirements are what? Pentium 233 with 64mb ram? It doesn't sound like much (the engine is pretty dated.), but they haven't gotten ANY new things in it that would have really increased processor usage. No new graphics in the 2d version, no sounds really, just bad programming.

Has anyone looked into the Demo Scene lately? I want them to program my OS and games for me!! They program stuff on 64k that most games can't do in 64MB!!!

I think that most of the time now, the programmers are seeing these fast 2.4ghz systems and thinking "Who needs to optimze their loops on a system that fast"? And "Let's use Long Doubles for everything, even if it's only a bool, more consistant that way..". I personally hope that they start seeing that they can run faster if they program better...