Higher Bars vs Good Enough

In reply to last week's post about microwave products, a reader wrote in:

But microwaves are so convenient that it's often my favoured way to cook even though it's subpar. If that's true, at least some of the time, for cooking is it not also, at least some of the time, for software?

Yes. Convenience is a valid reason to pick one tool over another. I did, after all, write a post recently that mentions the idea of satisficing - of picking something that's "good enough" and not spending too much time on trying to find "the best" solution.

The point that reconciles those two sentiments is: Clearly if we all have sudden access to vastly superior tools, we should expect the outputs of these tools to be vastly superior as well. And that's not what we're seeing right now with software. Microsoft Teams is still annoying to use. Jira is still messy. Apps and website are still buggy left, right and centre.

As our tools grow in capability, so should our bar for what counts as "good enough".