On Saturday, 2 November 2013 at 04:06:46 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
On 11/1/2013 6:52 AM, Wyatt wrote:
"We could, for instance, begin with cleaning up our language
by no longer
calling a bug a bug but by calling it an error. It is much
more honest because
it squarely puts the blame where it belongs, viz. with the
programmer who made
the error.
Although it is tempting to do so, creating a culture of "blame
the programmer" for the mistakes he's made also creates a
culture of denial of problems.
If you want to create quality of software, a far better culture
is one that recognizes that people are imperfect, and looks for
collaborative ways to engineer the possibility of errors out of
the system. That doesn't work if you're trying to pin the blame
on somebody.
My reading was less that an error should be hauled out as an
indictment of the individual who made it and more that we should
collectively be more cognizant of our own fallible nature and
accept that that affects the work we do. In that vein the _who_
is less important than the explicit understanding that some human
(probably me) mucked up. Of course, I tend to read EWD with a
fair bit of fabric softener- he was a grumpy old man on a mission.
Though even with the more literal interpretation, I'm not sure I
agree that necessarily has to be negative. If I'm in error, I
honestly _want_ to know. How it's conveyed is a function of the
culture that can make it a positive (learning) experience or a
negative one.
-Wyatt
