bugs

[David Vaughan]

> So tell me what could go wrong? ;-)

I realised while cooking the salmon this evening (crocodile being off  
the menu) that Geoff had inadvertently provided a wonderful case  
study on bugs. Any link to Geoff in the following is purely  
coincidental and nothing to do with him at all :-)

Once upon a time, an aspiring programmer wrote:
>> on mouseUp -- display the date
>>   answer the date with "OK"
>> end mouseUp
and released it as shareware.

His American audience loved it. He received five star ratings on  
Versiontracker and plaudits on download.com, so impressed were users  
at being able to load an application, click a single button and see  
the date. Most impressive of all, it looked bug free.

Then, some old bloke from Australia gave a negative review, declaring  
the code contained a bug in that the information "4/8/06" for 8 April  
was simply wrong. A Frenchman wrote to say that the format should be  
"060408". Both complained that this was a clear-cut bug about which  
the developer should have known before releasing the software with  
the documentation "Displays the date".

Relying on precedents in  "Gutnick v. Dow Jones", they observed that  
even though the software was uploaded in America to an American  
server, it was published in Australia and France where it was read,  
and therefore subject to those foreign laws of fitness for purpose,  
with which any judge in those jurisdictions would agree ;-)  
Therefore, we have an indisputable bug in even this simple application.

Now that we know that no code is bug-free, two issues arise, one of  
morality and one of money.

Has the programmer committed an Immoral Act by publishing this  
software with a bug about which those foreign users believe he should  
surely have known?

What commercial decision should the programmer make? Add 33% more  
lines to the code ("set the useSystemDate to true") just to cater for  
foreign system dates, or add one word to the documentation so that it  
says "Displays the U.S. date"? One action will cost more than the  
other, and either will cost more than doing nothing and restricting  
his target market. Perhaps he should focus his development energies  
on his upcoming product "Displays the time" which he expects to sell  
at twice the price?

So, it appears that
- bugs happen, even when they are sincerely believed not to exist and  
with the best will in the world, and testing which seemed  
comprehensive at the time;
- money matters in commercial decisions without greed per se being a  
factor;
- the morality of the developer is not questioned by the discovered bug.

Perhaps RunRev has more bugs than it should have. That is something I  
do not know, but Lynn may on industry benchmarks. Regardless,  
bugginess is a relative question.

regards
David