WHITE PAPERS SPONSORED PROFILES JOB BOARD WEBINAR CENTER FREE SOFTWARE BZ RESEARCH ALMSHAREPOINT EVENTS CALENDAR PRINT/PDF EDITION PRINT/PDF BACK ISSUES

SUBSCRIBE TODAY CUSTOMER SERVICE EDITORIAL CALENDAR EDITORIAL BEATS GUEST VIEW GUIDE SD TIMES 100 GUIDE EVENTS CALENDAR ADVERTISING ARTICLE REPRINTS REPORT A BUG SITE MAP

ABOUT US BZ MEDIA NEWS BZ RESEARCH NEWS ON MONDAY SPTECHREPORT SPTECHWEB SPTECHCON IPHONE/IPAD DEVCON ANDROID DEVCON PRIVACY POLICY CONTACT US

HOME >> COLUMNS

Larry in Real Life

By Larry O'Brien

December 15, 2007 — (Page 1 of 3)
You know those cartoons of the frustrated worker? Red cheeks, check valves for his pupils, popped-out collar stays and steam coming out of his ears? That’s me. I can’t ask anyone else for advice; only you can help me. You see, I am a bit of an advice-giver myself: I write a column for a software development newspaper. Nothing fancy, just a few hundred words on trends, practices that have proven to be worthy, and probably more references to Prolog than are strictly necessary. Now, though, the only thing that I can think to write is “Software cannot be developed without testing!” and then cutting and pasting 100 times. And you know how editors are about “stunt” columns.

But as you know, the form demands a certain presentation—if every story is not a success, than at least problems are recognized before they get out of hand. Mistakes, when discussed, are either those of others or those of the distant past (the foolish things I did with Prolog).

Let me give you some background. I engaged with a small company about rapidly developing some features for clients unhappy about the overall speed of system development. Pretty typical stuff: Pick some low-dangling fruit that’s never been given high priority, get some easy “wins” to take the pressure off.

What was supposed to be a simple automation task turned out to require not only supervision but also a large amount of “manual overrides” of this and that parameter. Who gave the client the impression that the system had “manual overrides”? Me! When I was developing it and a funky input value created an erroneous output, I said, “I can manually override that,” and then inserted a “magic number” into my code. I’m so ashamed! But it gets even worse, as the next month’s run showed funky values to be a regular occurrence, which, of course, I should have known since funky values are like cockroaches: If you see one, you’ve got a hundred.

Pages 1 2 3

Share this link: http://sdt.bz/31418

Most Read Latest News Blog Resources

Zeichick’s Take: Radio moves from analog waveforms to digital packets
Streaming radio highlights the need for streaming applications to be designed to take up as little bandwidth as possible

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Appcelerator Acquires Cocoafish to Add Instant Mobile Cloud Capabilities to its Industry Leading Titanium Platform
Appcelerator Offers Messaging, Social, Location and Storage Mobile Cloud Services to All Mobile App Publishers

ComponentOne Releases a Collection of 40+ UI Widgets Powered by HTML5 and jQuery
ComponentOne has announced the 2012 release of Wijmo: a kit of UI widgets for HTML5 and jQuery development

Taking enterprise architecture to the business side
Startup Corso is bringing out a cloud-based planning platform that ties into business plans

Top five apps to manage your workload
Web applications offer new ways to track your “to-do” lists

Not so fast when it comes to testing in the cloud
Developers face outsourcing, virtual lab management and mobile devices as obstacles

Xceed releases UX-focused suite for Microsoft’s WPF
"Blendables" helps match user experiences to developer visions

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.

The Hidden Costs of Software Licensing Moving beyond paper-based software licensing to more flexible, software-based licensing is a business decision. There is a growing trend tow...

Case Study: You May Need a Development Mechanic As a contractor for a major financial player in Germany, SOBEGE, a German-based consultancy specializing in embedded IT and web services, wa...

Ensuring Software Quality at a Major International Bank One of the world’s leading international banks has adopted AgitarOne technology for delivering generated unit tests for their Java software...

Load Testing Adobe Flex Applications Adobe Flex applications may be different from applications you’ve worked with before. For classic HTML web applications, the server does all...

Technorati

Digg

Slashdot

Facebook

Friendfeed

Twitter

del.icio.us

Lighthouse 5.0 links PPM with life-cycle management Artifact's latest version of its SaaS project management product introduces project and portfolio management to its capabilities. It can now organize testing data, requirements and other information for testing teams, making work go more smoothly, according to the company.

Codice Software brings life-cycle management tool to the U.S. The Spanish company's Plastic SCM addresses configuration management and version control in parallel development environments.

Sogeti Launches Free iOS and Android Software Testing Life Cycle App: TMap Life Cycle Free app places more than 25 years of software Testing and Quality Assurance expertise into the hands of Sogeti customers

Add comment

Name*
Email*
Country

Comment

Lighthouse 5.0 links PPM with life-cycle management
Artifact's latest version of its SaaS project management product introduces project and portfolio management to its capabilities. It can now organize testing data, requirements and other information for testing teams, making work go more smoothly, according to the company Read More...

News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>

Download Current Issue
FEBRUARY 2012 PDF ISSUE

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Want to subscribe?

Are you at risk for burnout?
Burnout is a severe problem and it can strike at any time. Here's how to tell if you are nearing the edge.
02/09/2012 02:16 PM EST

Agility, mom, and apple pie
If we're to evaluate the state-of-the-art in software development, we should start with the values espoused in the Agile Manifesto.
02/07/2012 11:57 AM EST

RIM woos developers with free tablet
How do you get more apps ported to the BlackBerry PlayBook? By giving every developer a free tablet, of course!
02/04/2012 01:57 PM EST

GitHire: Use Headhunters to Find Your Perfect Programmer
Are you a hiring manager tired of scouring the job boards? Check out this new service that will find 5 people interested in your jobs.
02/03/2012 12:17 PM EST

Facebook claims hacker cred
Facebook's SEC S-1 filing form includes a short essay on the Hacker Way by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
02/02/2012 08:26 AM EST

Ryan Dahl steps down
Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js, steps back from his position as gatekeeper for the project.
02/01/2012 04:58 PM EST