Debugging in OSS Always Faster

dex@ruunat writes "Damien Challet and Yann Le Du of the University of Oxford studied a model of software bug dynamics, which resulted in a paper on cond-mat this morning. In this paper they study the difference in evolution of number of bugs in open and closed source projects. They conclude: 'When the program is written from scratch, the first phase of development is characterized by a fast decline of the number of bugs, followed by a slow phase where most bugs have been fixed, hence, are hard to find'. Another, perhaps surprising conclusion is that debugging in open source projects is always faster than in closed source projects."

Comments

I have a c++ (unmanaged) project to get done.

[Sludge]

I develop with Cygwin and Emacs, but I compile and debug with Visual Studio 7.0. I believe that the Visual Studio debugger is unparalleled (lacking just Emacs integration! :) ), and there is nothing that can beat precompiled headers, a fast compiler (in the first place) and the visual debugging integration of Visual Studio.

I then boot to Linux and port my code. I've been writing portable code for half a decade, so I know what I'm doing, more or less. But, I can get more work done with Visual Studio, faster.

In case it makes a difference to your perception, I write end user apps, sometimes with heavy graphics requirements and GUI frontends.

Due to the nature of my work, I can't rely on masses to test everything before I ship.