Preferably, the industry should improve both the quality of their work and their understanding of what good software really is.

Most mature industries settle on standards, but software dev struggles because it’s a moving target.

If you buy cheap patio furniture from Walmart and it breaks two years later, you do not call the manufacturer and demand that they fix it. Nor would fixing it be and investigative nightmare of antiquated manufacturing techniques.

The consequences of poor quality are not clear to customers. They depend on the industry “experts” to do it right and set them up for continued success. The industry to a large extent has failed many, if not most, of it’s customers and it is generally regarded as normal.

People willing trade quality for price on a daily basis. I could purchase a very nice set of patio furniture from Crate & Barrel for a high price, or a not as nice set from Target for a lesser price or even a cheap set of cheap patio furniture from Wal-Mart.

“Do right by your customers”, “Price it right” and “Include everything necessary…” sound cliché in this context and not especially useful for people who are in the process of making that trade-off between doing poor quality work for the money and turning away work because they know they can’t deliver a quality deliverable.