Jack, a counter view of what you have written about software patching.

Software patching allows us to be far more bold in the way we release new features into the markets. If we could not do that we would have to be far more conservative about software releases and most of the utility of software would be lost. Patching allows us to make better products (ie. better feature sets and more value) faster and cheaper (ie. better price point for the customer).

Perhaps a different way to think about this is to consider what would hardware (and milk) delivery could look like if physical products could be "patched" too. Imagine the amazing innovation you could have in both cost reduction and new product introduction:

* Vanilla ice cream can be "upgraded" to chocolate ice cream. Heck, we can come up with new flavours every hour, or have open source developers making new flavours. If one of those flavours isn't quite right first time (bug!) we can update it (patch!). That would reduce the stock required, simplify the supply chain and reduce product costs. It would reduce wastage. It would mean an explosion of new flavours and icecream innovations - mushroom and venison barbecue ice cream that changes to mango-mint when you want a change - yum!

* Milk can be upgraded after you bought it. If it goes sour it can be made fresh by patching it. That means you can buy a gallon of milk even if you are only going to use a quart this week because you don't have to worry about it going off. The milk does not need refrigeration so that makes it easier to transport/store and no wastage. The store does not have to worry about product going bad, so they will always keep sufficient stock and won't run short. The grandkids come over on the week end and want chocolate milk. No problems. Upgrade it. Since a lot of the cost of milk is associated with dumping spoiled product and storage etc, the price of milk would halve. Better nutrition for the starving kids of the world!

* After driving 10,000 miles your oil and spark plugs are no longer pristine. Your car just wifis in an patch. Some new oil additive can improve mileage and is instantly upgraded. Come winter they find there's a tweak needed to the new oil formula - patch it. Your car lasts longer, runs smoother and gives better mileage. Far cheaper for you and better for the environment.

The point I am making is that the ability to patch is really part of what gives software the flexibility to rapidly provide feature sets that give people value. Without that, software would be developed and released on very conservative timescale and with very conservative feature sets. Boring, boring world!

If that new oil additive could not be patched they would have had to test it for years in a wide variety of cars: summer heat and freezing winters. Ten years later the new oil hits the market. That's a lot of investment for the oil company to make for a very risky product idea, so guess what: they don't even try!

All products have defects (eg. I bet you're had to fix/change things on your boat). Having to put up with defects (and batteries that go flat etc - also a defect of sorts) is just part of the cost people pay for the value they receive from a product.

You keep harping on software quality.  In this latest newsletter you say, "It strikes me as the height of navel-gazing to think that software, unlike any other product, doesn't have to work correctly. 'Software is hard so we blessed software engineers should be given a pass on quality' is a sure path to losing customers to more businesslike competitors."

The fact is that the size of the software industry as a whole is estimated to nearly half a trillion dollars and growing[1].  Customers continue to pay incredible amounts of money for buggy software.  I know, it doesn't really make sense to me either but at some point you have admit that there is plenty of data out there to back it up: buggy software sells.  Bill Gates became the richest man in the world by producing buggy software.  You just can't argue with this fact.

Obviously there is some level of quality needed, but going beyond that level is a waste of time, money, and effort for a seller of software in this market.  It's not what customers want.  Producing too high quality of software will put you out of business[2].  This is what you are fighting against when you advocate for higher software quality.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_industry#Size_of_the_industry

2. A recent post-mortem from a failed database business (relevant summary: MongoDB was buggier and they won):  http://www.defmacro.org/2017/01/18/why-rethinkdb-failed.html

With regard to the feedback from your readers, and your response...

• Many, many complained about the former print publications that now appear in on-line form only. Folks are unhappy with superficial content, too much vendor bias, and a lack of interesting articles.

I have to agree with the last point. Too many ex-magazines that now exist only as websites are overrun with user comments rather than hard-hitting technical content. I find some of these resources barely readable.

Sadly, I must agree with you and your survey respondents...

During my years editing our magazines at OpenSystems Publishing (in the 1980s and 1990s) I found that the very fast pace of technological evolution was outpacing the ability of many colleges and universities to provide young engineers with the new knowledge they needed to perform their jobs. I decided to try to fill that gap by providing highly technical articles in our magazines about these emerging standards and emerging technologies. 

In doing so, I found that an editor must:

(1) have a good enough technical background to recognize emerging technologies and emerging standards... early

(2) be able to identify companies who are working on new products that employ those emerging standards and technologies 

(3) articulate to the company's marketing people that their potential customers will need to be educated about the new standard or technology in order to see the value in their products.

(4) convince them that this is important enough to devote an engineer with enough expertise to the task of writing an article.

(5) be willing to expend as much effort editing the content of the article as the engineer expended in authoring it. 

I found that (5) was crucial because the overworked expert (who wrote the article) often found it to be too tedious (and too time consuming) to try to write an article that could be easily understood by more junior engineers, who would be eagerly reading that article. (Of course, this assumes that the editor will take the time to learn enough about the emerging standard or technology to ask intelligent questions - and not waste the author's time in the process.)

I believe that this approach (which we communicated with the tagline Magazines for Engineers, by Engineers) contributed to the early success of OpenSystems Publishing in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, the Internet has now changed all the incentives in the publishing business. Ad space on the web does not command as much revenue as pages in a paper magazine, and the effectiveness of those ads is now measured in click-throughs, rather of circles on bingo cards. 

As a result, most publishers have abandoned the strategy of providing highly technical tutorials to their readers, in favor of providing online Buyers Guides that can provide instant referrals of their readers to vendors, and in favor of providing outsourced electronic marketing services (such as webinars) to their advertisers. (Even my beloved OpenSystems Publishing has now changed its name to OpenSystems Media.)

With engineers currently facing...

(1) rapidly rising university tuitions

(2) the inconvenience of having to take time off work to attend classes

(3) the inability (or lack of interest) within universities to keep up with the accelerating pace of technological evolution

(4) the need for lifelong education

...we are seeing the spontaneous appearance of inexpensive online courses (such as those offered at Udemy.com) that provide crowd-sourced, just-in-time education for engineers. I believe that the sophistication of these course offerings will continue to improve over time - to the point where they will eventually be seen as an alternative to university courses. 

So, I guess it's time to leave behind any feelings of disappointment with the fact that magazines are no longer providing ongoing education, and begin looking for what will takes their place. Given current trends, I believe that Internet resources will eventually do a better job in that regard than magazines were ever able to do.