Since my software is only used internally, I use my strategy of
halting on an assertion and sending me an email for just in time coding.
When the data stream is out of what I wrote code for, it halts and
tells me about it.
Lets say that 98% of all the data my code will see is about
elephants. I know there are other animals I will have to code for
differently but they do not happen that frequently and I really want
to get this code working. I'll write the code, test for elephants,
and have all the elephant code well tested and running. If the code
sees something other than elephants, it halts and sends me email. It
is quite satisfying to retire a piece of code and see that the other
assertions never happened and to know I did not waste any time coding
for them. It is also much easier for me to code for another animal
when I have a live sample of that data coming at my software. So
either way, it's efficient for me.
This just in time coding works best when I control the users but I'm
imagining that it could work with paying customer kinds of users. You
could put up an alert that says something like:
"Hello, this software program does not have the ability today to
perform the action you are requesting. If you will permit me to do
so, I contact the software author site to see if a more recently
released software version has this capability."
If you number all your assertions, you could send the assertion
number and see if that was removed in a later version and if so, tell
them to download that later version. If the assertion is still in the
list, then step two could be:
"Hello, the current version of this software program does not have
the ability today to perform the action you are requesting. If you
will permit me to do so, I will email a copy of your data to the
software author, along with your email address, and the software
author will use your data as a test case to write code to perform the
action you are requesting. You will hear back from the software
author this time next week. The data will be kept confidential and
will be send via a secure channel. If you are still concerned about
security of your data, create a sample file with content that
triggers this message and then send us that data."
And then if they agree, email the data and the code.
Just a thought.
Kee Nethery
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