snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy T. Beagle) (11/30/88)
In article <1988Nov15.180821.20324@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: | The popular software distribution from a certain | university in southern California is a good example of interesting ideas | often marred by first-cut [i.e. poorly thought out, messy, sometimes | incomplete] designs and implementations. | This is not to say that any random commercial organization, like, say, | one whose name has three initials and an "&" in it, will *necessarily* | do better. But those people can, in theory, afford to spend some money | on quality assurance. Universities generally can't. Does this mean I should "rm -rf cnews" rather than trying to get it to build? :-) Can I trust software from a certain university in eastern Canada? :-) These days, a vender is likely to be pushing both hardware and software out the door as soon as possible so that they can rake in the bucks for whizzy new feature foobar before their competitor beats them to it. They may very well argue that they can't spend any more time/money on quality. If you want better quality, you need to get customers to demand it. Customers with large budgets. It isn't who you work for, it is your state-of-mind that counts. Tools like code inspections can help, but they may not buy you much if you're just going through the motions. _____ /_____\ Snoopy /_______\ |___| tektronix!tekecs!sopwith!snoopy |___| sun!nosun!illian!sopwith!snoopy
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (12/02/88)
In article <70@sopwith.UUCP> snoopy@sopwith.UUCP (Snoopy T. Beagle) writes: >| This is not to say that any random commercial organization, like, say, >| one whose name has three initials and an "&" in it, will *necessarily* >| do better. But those people can, in theory, afford to spend some money >| on quality assurance. Universities generally can't. > >Does this mean I should "rm -rf cnews" rather than trying to get it to >build? :-) Can I trust software from a certain university in eastern >Canada? :-) You pays your money and you takes your chances! :-) Some people can write good software without a QA group standing over them with a club. Some can't. If there *is* a club-equipped CA-group, the odds of getting consistently good software are better. If there isn't, as in universities, much depends on who wrote the stuff, and on whether they got out on the right side of bed that morning. (Even I, normally the absolute pinnacle of programming perfection, have been known to produce code with occasional trivial, unimportant flaws on a bad day. :-) :-) :-) :-)) >These days, a vender is likely to be pushing both hardware and software >out the door as soon as possible so that they can rake in the bucks for >whizzy new feature foobar before their competitor beats them to it. They >may very well argue that they can't spend any more time/money on quality. Yes, unfortunately, some QA departments come with a leash rather than a club as standard equipment... -- SunOSish, adj: requiring | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 32-bit bug numbers. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu