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More Than Coding Errors Behind Bad Software

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the bad-decisions-go-all-the-way-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SANS' just-released list of the Top 15 most dangerous programming errors obscures the real problem with software development today, argues InfoWeek's Alex Wolfe. In More Than Coding Mistakes At Fault In Bad Software, he lays the blame on PC developers (read: Microsoft) who kicked the time-honored waterfall model to the curb and replaced it not with object-oriented or agile development but with a 'modus operandi of cramming in as many features as possible, and then fixing problems in beta.' He argues that youthful programmers don't know about error-catching and lack a sense of history, suggesting they read Fred Brooks' 'The Mythical Man-Month,' and Gerald Weinberg's 'The Psychology of Computer Programming.'"

5 of 726 comments (clear)

  1. cheap shot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work at Microsoft. We use agile development and almost everybody I know here has read the Mythical Man Month. Get your facts straight before taking cheap shots in story submissions. Thanks.

  2. Microsoft? by dedazo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Most of the teams I've had contact with inside the tools group at MS (in the last four years or so) use SCRUM.

    I don't know how widespread that is in other divisions (say the MSN/Live folks or the Microsoft.com teams) but that clever comment in the submission is nothing more than an ignorant cheap shot.

    Don't be so twitterish and make up crap about Microsoft. Get your facts straight or you just come across as an idiot.

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  3. Re:Perfection Has a Price by networkBoy · · Score: 5, Informative

    they cost a shit ton of money is what happened.

    A project I was on in 2000ish went as follows:
    Steppings A0, A1, A2, and A3 were halted in-fab because someone found a critical bug in simulations.
    A4-A7 did not work.
    B0-B4 did not work B6 did not work
    C0-C4 did not work
    B5, B7, C5 sorta worked.
    The company folded.
    That's what a software mentality working on hardware will get you.

    Steppings in CPUs are a little different. Often an earlier stepping was functional enough to start the design cycle for Dell HP, et.al. but not ideal. The later steppings start by fixing the deficiencies, then beyond that are likely cost cutting.
    -nB

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  4. Re:Perfection Has a Price by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't like that. You'd run your program and it was ready in a second, you'd exit and it left no trace. Crashes were virtually unheard of. We have people where I work who only do data entry, and they still use wordperfect 4.2 on 386 hardware. I've seen their workflow and how fast it works for them and I can see if they "modernized" it would cripple their productivity.

    You remember wrong.
    The old stuff was always failing and had a bunch of problems...
    You are probably thinking about your old DOS PC. If the floppy disk wasn't corrupted thinks in general worked and it worked well. Why because the programmer could fairly easily test all the cases, and allow security bugs, as a buffer overflow can be prevented as it would take to long for the guy to physically type in the data... And it was one application with essentially the full PC at its whim.
    If you tried to do computing with Multi-tasking such as apps like Desqview your stability was greatly reduced. It would make you want to wish for Windows 95. Or remember Windows 3.1 stabilty...

    Downloading data via the Modem was a hit or miss activity. I remember getting disconnected trying to download Slackware as there was a combination for the zmodem that passed the hangup code to the modem, forcing me to regzip the file over again to get it.

    Just because you were doing simple things back then it wasn't because they were better.

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  5. Re:Question by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry to be harsh, but get with the times. Computing these days is vastly more complex then back in the "good old days".

    You. are. fucking. kidding. me., right?

    The sources of complexity have changed, but not significantly increased.

    When's the last time your code had to:

    • Employ overlays to make your code fit into memory?
    • Write a large, complex algorithm in assembly, or even (in the 50's) straight machine language?
    • Consider writing self-modifying code, just to make the program require less memory?
    • Make "clever" use of obscure, corner-case behavior of certain machine instructions, not because you like to screw the people who will inherit the code, but because you have only a time amount memory to work with?
    • Intentionally mis-DIMENSION an array in fortran 77 code, knowing that it will work out okay at runtime, just to avoid (by necessity) the runtime cost of using array-slicing functions?