Quality

I came across a story I had read a long time ago in school. At that time, the story did not mean much to me. For one simple reason, there was no sense of laxity - no sense of leisure. In those days I was a powerhouse of energy - no ailments and all. Things telling us about quality and all was meaningless because there was no need for reminding. Now, it makes sense to me much more than ever.

So much for the meta data - the story is titled "Quality" as you might have already guessed if you've been doing some De Bono stuff lately. It's written by one person named John Galsworthy. And it is quite nice.

It's a story of a shoe-maker Gessler; an artist at his skill and just as devoted to it. The shoes he made always fit his clients feet beautifully. And he only made shoes on order - no retailing. What is more, he did not advertise at all. As a result, the inferior firms (the firms that didn't care what their customers really got out of their products) took the business away from him. What becomes of him is not the focus of the story, however. What the author really projects is the absolute devotion the shoe-maker has to his trade. On one occasion, when the character narrating the story asks Mr. Gessler "Isn't it hard?" - his reply was a sober "Id is ardt" (Gessler was a German). All in all a great story - and worth reading atleast once.

And how does it all link to us - the much hyped bearers of the future of this world - the IT professionals and computer scientists? Well, it so happens - from the things that I have been seeing around, this is absolutely perfect a description of what is happening in the software world. People are churning out huge quantities of code with little attention paid to the quality of the code. No further comments.