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Ask Slashdot: Should Developers Fix Bugs They Cause On Their Own Time?
Bizzeh writes "Today my boss came to me with what he thought to be a valid point and analogy. A builder builds a wall. A week later, bricks begin to fall out of the bottom, but he continues to build the wall higher. In most cases, he would have to replace those lower bricks at his own expense and on his own time. Comparatively: A software developer writes a piece of software. When bugs are discovered, the developer is paid to fix them by the employer and on the employer's time. I didn't know how to refute the analogy at the time, but it did make me think: why are bugs in software treated differently in this way?"
or the design of the foundation is incorrect, or the client wanted a wooden wall instead of brick, or the brick manufacturer changed how the bricks are made becuase of a change in the brick standard, or the bricks had to be changed because they were found to be vulnerable to attacks by clay termites, or ....
Bugs are rarely just he result of a programmer screwing up.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Nonsense, the builder's employee is analogous to the computer itself. Programmers are far above the low level work of brick laying. Programmers are more like experimental architects. Less experienced or simply more optimistic programmers will make more mistakes because they're constantly learning. One might further say that a programmer, who by trade is exercising the trade of "computer science", is in fact closer in position to that of a scientist. If scientists only got paid when their hypothesis was correct, no matter how many experiments were run, not much science would be getting done. If an employer does not understand this risk, they probably are not prepared to be doing business in the industry and might also want to double check their employee tax obligations.
Software development is probably more like engineering and building a bridge. You need to compare with something where not everything is known at the outset.
Actually, there is a real life building analogy of the type you seek- large scale projects such as the expansion of the Panama Canal, which currently appears to have ground to a halt amidst massive cost overruns.
So, it is not always true the builder fixes any problems on his own time and costs. In some cases, the client pays (hence the cost overruns) or if there is a dispute, a mess ensues as in the example above.