Good software comes to those who wait

By Jacob McQuillan, Developer and Social Media Manager at Microsoft

When ensuring that the product or thing you're making is top quality, whether that be a game or a PowerPoint presentation, it's so much better to delay something than to rush to release it, ultimately not making the product as good as it can be.

Some of you reading this may remember that Rockstar Games delayed Red Dead Redemption 2 this year. It was supposed to be released in the Autumn, however it's now set to come out in Spring 2018.

There was an uproar about this; people were absolutely furious that they had to wait longer for a game they were looking forward to so much. However, there was a minority that were happy that the game they were looking forward to would be released eventually, and their patience would be rewarded with a better game.

When it comes to the things you're personally working on, be it a presentation, a website or software, people will be much happier with the final product if you take as long as you need, rather than rushing or not finishing it.

Sticking with games as the example, let's say that the team that worked on Call of Duty: WWII were concerned that they wouldn't be finished in time for its release, and the game was riddled with problems and errors. There are two ways this can go: release the game in its broken state, or push the launch back by a month and release it in the state that was originally intended.

If you release the game broken, you risk losing sales, having angry customers and receiving bad press. If you apologise and push the launch back, people may still get angry, but not as angry as they would have been if they'd bought a broken game. Now they have a game without major bugs that, although they had to wait for it, isn't broken!

AAA developers can’t always do this, as there are other factors to take into account such as marketing spend and shareholders. However, you can definitely do this with your app, game or website!

Although this article has been focused on games, the important thing to remember is when this applies to your work. If you have the chance to make sure that something you release is top notch, you're going to want to take it. Even an extra 5 minutes can help improve code drastically.

A great way to do this is to always write unit tests, add comments to your code or even get someone else to critique your work. All three of these things can help make your software even better.

So next time, think before you commit your work to GitHub or update your website; be sure to double check it and only release it once you’re 100% happy!