bugs

[Mark Wieder]

Garrett-

Thursday, April 6, 2006, 5:42:29 PM, you wrote:

> How can someone sleep at night knowing they've release software with
> bugs in it?  Don't you feel guilty about it?

ROTFL. Let me interrupt an otherwise wonderful rant in progress with
the following:

As a QA engineer, I'd love to find some bug-free software someday.
Doesn't exist. Bug-free is code-free. In reality, somebody has to make
the hard decision with any piece of software about where to draw the
line as far as which bugs *must* get fixed before this release ships
and which can be punted until the next point release. The decision
itself can be argued forwards and backwards, but that's a different
issue from saying that software can't be shipped until *all* the bugs
are out. I sometimes joke that my job in QA is to "prevent products
from shipping", but the reality is that the inherent push-and-pull
between QA and, well, everyone else, is aimed at reaching the decision
point that results in the best possible product shipping *at that
time*.

This is not to say that there aren't some *major* bugs in rev which
IMO need to be addressed immediately (especially the ones I've written
up myself, of course), but if you wait for a bug-free product you
might as well be waiting for a bug-free <enter your OS of choice>. Or
a final Project Xanadu or something.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net