Tuesday 23 April 2013
Do you fix bugs before writing more code?
It is in software companies' best interest to command their project managers to only lightly force an import deadline upon programmers. Why? An enclosing deadline with merely only weeks or months remaining can severely damage your programmers work efficiency causing projects to fall behind, drastically. A tight deadline causes stress. Stressed programmers is a project managers worse nightmare, everything is rushed and the output code is buggy and useless.Code that has many buggy characteristics will only cause more problems when additional code is added. In industries the active project will be much more efficient if all bugs are targeted and fixed before more is added. A perfect example is, in fact the first Microsoft Word. The programmers of Microsoft Word were all working obscene hours to ship one build in the (tight) deadline they had. The project was continuously delayed again and again. When the final build was shipped off Microsoft placed the team on vacation and commenced searching for the main cause of the late shipping. It was found that the project managers were sticking to the deadline so much that programmers were forced to rush. The story goes one programmer, who had to write code to calculate the height of the text wrote return 12; and simply waited for the bug report to come in. The longer you wait to fix a bug, the more costly it is in terms of time and money to fix.
Bug Database
Keep a bug database! This is extremely important, some programmers wager that they have a mental list of bugs. I can hardly remember 5 bugs in my code that I only wrote last night. Especially when working in large teams a bug database is a must. A simple database might consist of the following:a) Detailed steps to reproduce the bug
b) Expected behaviour
c) observed (buggy) behaviour
d) Who's in charge of this particular bug
e) The status ie critical, unstable, stable, fixed
If you do not have one at your workplace you are wasting precious time everyday when you come back to that piece of code figuring out the particular bug ... its a must!
Get a Tester
Having a dedicated 'tester' is today a vital, must-have in the workplace. A programmer on a $100/hr payroll testing code is illogical and expensive especially when you can have a $30/hr tester doing this. There should be at least one tester for every 3 programmers for efficiency and speed. Get stuff done, get a tester.Is there any aspects of this article you disagree or agree with? Let me know in the comments!
