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

[Richard Gaskin]

David Burgun wrote:

> On 6 Apr 2006, at 21:29, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>> How many commercial products do you publish, and how large are they  
>> (KLOC)?
...
> 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 was reading recently that large, well-managed open source projects 
have defect rates in the neighborhood of 0.4 - 0.6/KLOC (e.g, Apache is 
at 0.51).  Smaller projects by less experienced teams tend to be higher. 
  On a 1.5 MLOC code base a 0.5 defect density would mean 750 bugs.

Hats off to your team.  They sound light years ahead of industry averages.


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

There's an irony about the script editor and debugger:

Since they're necessary to do anything else in Transcript, when they 
have problems then productivity in addressing any other scripted issue 
will be lower than by simply prioritizing the editor and debugger first.

Extra bonus points that a solid editor/debugger also makes customers 
happy too. :)

...
> 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.

Yes, I have a few such stories myself....

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com