This is rather interesting to read. But it reinforces something I've seen in my career. The majority of users of software I've helped build, they use it in ways that are mind bending to me. Workflows I would never think of, that somehow do what they need.

The second one is most software contains bugs. Users that expect to get things done simply choose workflows to avoid the worst consequence of those bugs very quickly.

Bug: this blog has no max-width. Lines of text will grow infinitely long with width.

I’m really anal about the Quality of my own software, and tend to be hard on others’ software (doesn’t make me too popular).

> I've had multiple jobs where directors/VPs/execs/etc. sometimes ask me to evaluate something when they want an actual opinion from someone who is relatively likely to notice issues (and fix them or drive fixes for them if necessary).

I’ve had the experience where I need to be asked, and even then, if my opinion isn’t “ist güt,” it’s often ignored.

When someone makes a proposal, I tend to immediately see the potential issues, and used to point them out, and suggest workarounds or mitigation strategies, without being asked.

Not the happy path. I get accused of being “negative,” my suggestion is shitcanned, and I’m shunned.

I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut, and if the situation calls for it, start quietly preparing for when the wheels fall off.

I have also learned to never say “I told you so,” as that is a petty and vindictive statement. Doesn’t help at all.

I had to give up when the first example of a "bug" that the author could see, which others are blind to, was search results.

"In some cases, people sent me their actual search results. In every such case, the search results did not contain a good result that I could see"

Software that does not meet expectations, especially in a field like search, which is basically a long running war between SEO and search engines, is not a 'bug'. That's like saying there is 'bug blindness' in the publishing industry because when I pick up a random book, it sucks, even though others think it's fine. Sure, maybe something is wrong, could even be improved, but lets save the word 'bug' for something more specific.

Blackboard is definitely a really strong contender for the worst software I've ever had to use. When I was in uni, I went so far as to write an alternative that scraped the content from blackboard and published it on a site that I could actually browse sensibly.

They were paying exorbitant amounts of money for the license too.