[Ticket#: 2006040510000641] Re: [OT] Articles to read

[David Burgun]

On 6 Apr 2006, at 21:29, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> David Burgun wrote:
>
>> One rule I try to always stick to, is that if there are bugs  
>> reported  in a release, however minor, they are fixed before the  
>> next major  release is made.
>
> How many commercial products do you publish, and how large are they  
> (KLOC)?

I've worked on many commercial products that sold in the 10,000's or  
where bundled with printers, scanners, digital camera's etc. and were  
sold in the 100,000's. If there were bugs still in there after 2  
years then we wouldn't get the contract to bundle with the next  
printer, scanner or whatever. In terms of size, well I suppose the  
biggest was around 1,500 files in a CodeWarrior project (including  
libraries, resources etc.). Someone once did a line count and I think  
they said there was around 1.5 million lines of C/C++ code.

Sure we had bugs in there on the last release, but they were really  
obscure bugs that would happen once in a very long while and were not  
easily reproducible. I'm talking about bugs that are sooooooo obvious  
so as to smack you in the face on an hourly basis, and for 2+ years!

> Of course we'd all like to aim for zero defects in our work, but in  
> practice if a program is complex enough the developer will have to  
> settle for less than being the only vendor to ship a program of  
> that size bug-free.
>
> HyperCard shipped with more than 500 known bugs, most OSes ship  
> with thousands.  In terms of complexity Rev is somewhere between  
> the two, a "virtual machine" of sorts, so we can expect some known  
> bugs to persist.

Just look at the Script Editor! There are at least 10 bugs that I  
come across every day, and for 2+ years???!!!!

For instance, straight off the top of my head:

1.  I open a script and do nothing to the script, I then close the  
script and it gives me the "Do you want to save?" dialog.
2.  The script colorization doesn't work consistently.
3.  Sometimes the script editor/debugger loses it's mind and when you  
click on the error it opens the *same* script in another window. If  
you then edit this window and close it, then notice that the other  
window is still open and close that one, you lose your changes!
4.  The debugger sometimes just plain refuses to breakpoint, even  
when you insert a "breakpoint" command into the script.
5.  The Menu Builder tool is really flakey.

There are loads more but I really don't feel like typing them all  
again, anyone that uses the IDE on a daily basis knows them.

Just take number 2 above, if you developed an App and a part of it  
that was used all day every day had a similar bug in it, would you  
really want to leave it like that for 2+ years?

All I am saying is that, ok, a few bugs in the IDE isn't the end of  
the world, but come on, after 2+ years and they are still there?

One of the really embarrassing things about this is, that a couple of  
times I have gone out on a limb and managed to get RunRev evaluated  
in a software engineering department, then the software manager comes  
along and asks for a demo of how "easy" it is to develop in RunRev  
and a breakpoint doesn't work or the script editor is flakey, then  
the manager is likely to say "it's a toy", bring it back when it's  
ready for prime time TV!

In the last 2 years, RunRev has lost at least 3 licenses because of  
lots of silly little bugs in the most visible of places and that's  
just my experience.

All the Best
Dave