I forgot to mention the sixth actor, although alluding to it in my
very first line below: inverse time.
David
On 10/04/2006, at 10:21, David Vaughan wrote:
On 10/04/2006, at 2:37, Geoff Canyon wrote:
The question is this: what do you think is the upper limit for
_completely_ bug-free code?
Was your code bug-free the first time you wrote it, no typographic
errors or any other changes? Do not answer that because it is only
a lead-in to the next comment, that the upper limit is for code
which can be made bug free with reasonable economic effort, and
that is in my view controlled by the number of people involved.
Your script worked well because you (I presume) conceived the
requirement, the design and the implementation and it was self-
documenting in that the descriptive text carries import to you
which it may not for other people. I take it for the moment that
you are also the user.
To the extent that you introduce new actors at any one of those
five roles, you will increase the probability of bugs both arising
and persisting.
I have some small to complex stacks which to the best of my
knowledge are bug free, but no-one else uses them, they are
substantially undocumented, and the design and usage pattern are
perfectly matched, both being through me. I have little doubt that
use by other people might expose real bugs and absolutely no doubt
whatsoever that those other users would raise as bugs points which
I considered to be "obvious" design choices or usages.
I have also a fairly complex stack with at least one obvious bug
but I know about it and work around it because that costs me less
effort, even on a regular basis, than investing in fixing that
stack compared with my other development priorities which are
themselves way below my other life priorities (reiterating for
those who have not read it before that I do not develop software to
order nor for product). Eventually, it will irritate me enough and
I will have the spare time so I will fix it.
The last part was a bit of a digression. The main answer is that
bugs arise less from code size than from the count of actors in the
five steps from concept to use. A sufficiently complex project
conceived, developed and used by a single person will merely not be
finished while the development bugs are being ironed out. :-)
cheers
David
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