On Wednesday, 30 October 2013 at 22:31:45 UTC, growler wrote:
On Wednesday, 30 October 2013 at 19:25:45 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 07:14:50PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
[...]
For automated testing to be practical, of course, requires
that the
system be designed to be tested in that way in the first place
-- which
unfortunately very few programmers have been trained to do.
"Whaddya
mean, make my code modular and independently testable? I've a
deadline
by 12am tonight, and I don't have time for that! Just hardcode
the data
into the global variables and get the product out the door
before the
midnight bell strikes; who cares if this thing is testable, as
long as
the customer thinks it looks like it works!"
Sigh.
T
Agree 100%.
I read a book way back in the late 1990's, "Rapid Development"
by Steve McConnell I think it was called. I remember it was a
great read and filled with case studies where development best
practices are dissolved by poor management. This Toyota story
reads very much like the examples in that book.
Mind you that corporate ideology might be just as harmful as bad
engineering. I'm sure there is the odd engineer who points out a
thing or two to the management, but they won't have none of that.
German troops in Russia were not provided with winter gear,
because the ideology of the leadership dictated (this is the
right word) that Moscow be taken before winter. I wouldn't rule
it out that "switch-off-engine-buttons" are a taboo in certain
companies for purely ideological reasons.
