[Insight-developers] Battling Software Defects One Developer At A Time

[Luis Ibanez]

http://advice.cio.com/10196/battling_software_defects_one_developer_at_a_time?commentpage=1

<quote>

"The majority of developers are well aware of the problems caused by their
profession, so why do they continue to write faulty software? There have
been many software tools created to detect and combat software defects.
However, in my experience these tools are only used by developers when they
think there is a problem and not on a regular basis. I would say that the
key to increasing software quality is to penetrate the work flow of the
developer."

"The Developer Mindset
Developers are often under great pressure to produce new features very
rapidly, and I would argue that most of them actually like it that way. To a
real geek it can be exciting to create and deliver new features. It is not
as “sexy” to create a new test or increase code coverage when compared to
creating a new 3-D visualization. I would argue that the best way to improve
software quality is to make the developers want to test, and to perform the
tests automatically as part of the development process."

"Going back to the Therac-25 example,.... the software was designed so that
it was relatively impossible to test it in a clean automatic way."

"This drives home the point that for software testing to be effective, it
must be automatic and part of the process. "

</quote>
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