> > However, the "best bugs" are introduced during programming, but much > earlier. Catching bugs at the earliest possible time is expensive, but > the ROI is immense and outweighs the cost by several orders of > magnitude. Of course, any manager who was reading this dropped out at > the word "expensive", so defective software will remain the standard.
You know that, in over 30 years of programming, I never really had those types of bugs that become features in software. But, I'm very unusual, I program as a means of thinking out the physics of the problem I'm trying to solve. In other words, I write software, where the previous generation, or even physicists 5 years ahead of me, would work things on on paper. I recall, back in '81, patientily listening to a post doc explaining how to do the error anaysis of my data. I patiently listened to him, he knew more than I did on most things and had earned my respect, until there was a pause. I then asked him, but isn't this just an approximation, wouldn't running a Monte Carlo to get the error be more accurate. He said "yes, but do you have any idea how much it would cost to do a Monte Carlo error analysis?" I said "yes, $0.27. I did it this morning." He looked at me, and said "grad. students have it too easy these days, and I left his office" The moral of the story is that if you think carfully about what questions you ask early, and your job title allows you to do that (as someone who is expected to come up with inventions that solve problems, you get some leeway...especially if you have a PhD in physics....it may not be fair that we get more leeway, but it's my experience), then you can have software that actually basically works the first time it is tried with a real tool. I've twice had the experience of "well we'll try this, but we'll have to get back to you when it fails" and me saying "but, I've tested it pretty extensively on data in post processing mode, if the same data is in the tool, I'll have failure modes with unusual data, but it should generally work" and having it work first time in the tool. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
