I agree, some companies do it that way. That doesn't make it sound
development strategy. When I last went looking in the job market,
all the companies in my area were ISO900* compliant (a government
town makes this a requirement - heck, a few fly an ISO900* banner
outside their offices). The first question they ask is, "What are
your [code] documentation skills?" Any idiot can write code, and I've
had to deal with the code of a lot of idiots.
Government != commercial.
Government contracts can insist on ISO9000 compliance. Goverment
contracts can also insist on $900 toilet bowl seats --- our tax dollars
at work...
Seriously, the commercial world, where you have deadlines and competitors
to beat and market share to grab, is very different from companies who
can simply work on government contracts.
Don't assume that what you see in the goverment contractor world has any
relationship to the Microsoft/Netscape world, where companies release
barely tested BETA code in order to beat the other in the browser wars,
for example.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing, mind you; I'm simply saying
what *is* for a large number of companies out there. There's a term for
it, coined by the inventor of Java --- it's called "developing on
internet time."
- Ted