You can build software as reliable as a car, but that's not the issue. You cannot build software with all of the features desired by management in the time allotted and also make it robust. It's a matter of priorities, and robustness is not Adobe's priority.
Although you're right that for some projects, the poor quality is because it's more fun to just hack it together, but for many, it's a matter of business priority. I've worked on projects (avionics software) that had the rigor that you describe. I've also worked on projects where the developers consistently tried to add robustness, but management kept redirecting them to add more features.
Although you're right that for some projects, the poor quality is because it's more fun to just hack it together, but for many, it's a matter of business priority. I've worked on projects (avionics software) that had the rigor that you describe. I've also worked on projects where the developers consistently tried to add robustness, but management kept redirecting them to add more features.