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The large quantity of very profitable and very poorly done software is a counter to your last sentiment.

Here's the thing: most consumers don't know enough about what "great software" means to care much about it. They just want software that works to solve a problem they have. They don't care if it never crashes or is written in language X or written by a process with rigorous QA and design, etc.

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I'm not arguing that it can't be done, I too have seen plenty of examples. I'm saying that it's not leading anywhere, individually or collectively; which is why I suggest focusing on substance instead and seeing where that leads us. I believe the problem is that the general public have no clue about what's possible, and we're not doing a very good job at showing them by producing more of the same crap.

My point is that the general public doesn't care what's possible, and it doesn't matter how good we are at showing them. It isn't that they're incapable of understanding, just that they (we) have a finite budget for attention and learning about things and the "what's possible" in software is generally much lower in priority for that.

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