marc@txsil.lonestar.org (Marc Rettig) (07/24/90)
Greetings, all. I am working on the first installment of what will be a quarterly column in the Communications of the ACM, entitled "The Practical Progammer." The column will describe ideas and techniques that have worked in practice. Each installment will be accompanied by a sidebar called "Programming in Black and Blue" that describes another approach to the same problem that failed miserably. That's where I need your help. I'd like to hear your tales of blood and gore, of misery and weeping, of good plans gone awry and bad plans forced to completion. The column will range across many issues of interest to programmers, from actual algorithms and code to things like testing and working together as a team. Each quarter I'll post a message like this one, announcing the topic for the next column and asking for war stories. To get things started, here is how the first three installments are shaping up: 1 Working effectively as a team Do you know of a project that failed or went astray because of problems in the team? Was it a problem of organization, leadership, social styles? What happened? How could the problem have been resolved? 2 The development process We design, then code, then test. Right? What do design documents look like? Who reviews them, if anybody? Coding standards? Code reviews? How do you review everything and still have enough time to do your own work? How do you stay on schedule? I'll describe a development process that is working very effectively (few bugs, project on schedule, happy programmers). I'd like to hear stories of what happens when the process isn't planned, or the plans are ignored, or the plans are bad. 3 Testing There should be plenty of horror stories for this topic! Inadequate testing, no testing, making changes after testing was complete, unforeseen conditions that tests didn't cover, and so on. I promise not to publish anything without your permission. At your request, you and/or your company can remain anonymous. If I get several stories, I'll pick the best one or two and use them. If I get lots of stories, I'll use the best ones and post the best of the rest to comp.misc (unless someone can suggest a better place to put them). If there are lots of good ones, we may run the "Black and Blue" sidebar monthly even though the column is only quarterly. So let's hear your stories, folks. We can all learn from each other's mistakes, and we all love to see each other's dirty underwear. ------ Marc Rettig Academic Computing, Summer Institute of Linguistics Contributing Editor, Communications of the ACM
marc@txsil.lonestar.org (Marc Rettig) (11/19/90)
Greetings, all.
Thanks to everyone that sent in war stories for the
first "Programming in Black and Blue." Together with
the column it accompanies, "Practical Programmer," it
appeared in the October Communications of the ACM.
I'm now preparing for the second installment. The topic
will be "testing." The column will discuss the question,
"what is 'adequate' testing?" and describe an object-
oriented system that has built-in automated test
procedures.
For the Programming in Black and Blue sidebar, I'd
like to include stories of projects that had problems
with inadequate testing, no testing, bugs that snuck
through testing, unforeseen conditions that were
overlooked in testing, bad management of testing,
and so on.
I promise not to publish anything without your permission.
At your request, you and/or your company can remain anonymous.
Serve the industry--spill your guts on the pages of
CACM.
Thanks much,
Marc Rettig
Contributing Editor, Communications of the ACM
marc@txsil.lonestar.org
Compuserve: 76703,1037