Re: Writing better software was: Design by Contract (was Re: Interesting thread in comp.lang.eiffel)

[Simon Brady <see@below.for.email.address>]

"Robert I. Eachus" wrote:
> 
> Simon Brady wrote:
> 
> > Now that I think about it, it's wimpy to say "potentially" here.
> > Software quality isn't just about lack of bugs, it's about _confidence_
> > that there's a lack of bugs. So if they cut testing (and hence lowered
> > their confidence in the software), I would argue that they're still
> > delivering a lower-quality product even if it happened to be bug-free.
> > Of course, some might say such a purist approach is commercially naive,
> > but then that's why I'm not a commercial programmer :-)
> 
>    There is a very subtle, but insidious fallacy in the above.  Not to
> do ANY testing is quite likely to result in catastrophic failure.  On
> the other hand, testing should always be one part, and often not the
> largest part, of a well planned quality assurance program.

A valid point well-made, Robert. I was rather sloppily using "testing"
as shorthand for "all that process-related stuff that improves quality".
Thanks for not letting me get away with such hand-waving (which, as you
point out, could have disastrous consequences in a real project).

Simon Brady                                            sjbrady
Research Assistant, Computer Science Dept.               at
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand            acm dot org