The quality tag has no wiki summary.
97
votes
18answers
23k views
Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs
My friend is a project manager for a software company. The most frustrating thing for him is that his engineers frequently leave their jobs. The company works hard to recruit new engineers, transfer ...
62
votes
35answers
13k views
Why isn't software as reliable as a car?
I had a user ask me this question. We know that cars break down, but that's because of something physical (unless software is involved!).
I tried to answer that software is a much younger industry, ...
43
votes
9answers
5k views
Clean readable code vs fast hard to read code. When to cross the line?
When I write code I always try to make my code as clean and readable as possible.
Every now and then there comes a time when you need to cross the line and go from nice clean code to slightly uglier ...
38
votes
17answers
2k views
Software Design: Build it fast or build it well?
When building a non-trivial application, is it best to focus on getting things working quickly, and taking shortcuts in the code like mixing model logic with your views, breaking encapsulation - ...
35
votes
10answers
2k views
Bare minimum on the Joel Test [closed]
From the Joel Test, of the 12, which do you think are the absolute must-haves to at least have a decently running software department/company?
I realise there is no absolutely right answer. I'm just ...
26
votes
19answers
3k views
Is Software Testing Really Needed?
I'm a student working on my B.E(CS) and my question is the following:
Is testing in the software field needed?
If we create a software with great care, then why should we test?
After testing can ...
25
votes
7answers
1k views
Are there architecture smells?
There are tons of resources on the web referring to and listing code smells. However, I've never seen information on architectural smells. Is this defined somewhere, and is there a list available? ...
23
votes
3answers
1k views
What is the term for a 'decoy' feature or intentional bug? [closed]
I have forgotten a slang programming term. This thing is an intentional bug or a decoy feature used as a distraction. An example usage, "Hey Bob, QA is doing a review today. Put a $THING into the ...
20
votes
14answers
2k views
When is it okay to ship a product with a known bug?
When is it okay to ship a product with a known bug?
20
votes
1answer
689 views
What is the effect of creating unit tests during development on time to develop as well as time spent in maintenance activities?
I'm a consultant and I am going to introduce unit tests to all developers at my client site. My goal is to ensure that all new applications should have unit tests for all classes created.
The client ...
19
votes
4answers
515 views
How to create a “cult of quality”
DeMarco and Lister (Peopleware) suggest you create a "cult of quality" within your programming team. Frustratingly, they don't suggest how you go about doing that!
Anyone got any thoughts on how to ...
18
votes
8answers
1k views
Is the average number of bugs per loc the same for different programming languages?
I have been told that the average number of bugs/defects per line of code is "constant" for different programming languages. 10 KLOC of Ruby would have the same number of bugs as 10 KLOC of c++. The ...
14
votes
9answers
780 views
Good design: How much hackyness is acceptable? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Prototyping vs. Clean Code at the early stages
I'm right in front of a difficult decision.
I have a problem in my codebase (it's in C++), which I could solve in two ...
14
votes
5answers
2k views
How do you integrate Testing into a Scrum process?
This is really perplexing me. We have a 'definition of done' and it includes dev 'done', unit tests 'done', dev test 'done'. However we also have a user acceptance test that needs to be 'done' but the ...
14
votes
5answers
582 views
Is there a measure of code rot?
I'm dealing, again, with a messy C++ application, tons of classes with confusing names, objects have pointers into each other and all over, longwinded Boost and STL data types, etc. (Pause and ...
13
votes
9answers
652 views
What are the worst things that inexperienced developers forget to think about? [closed]
As a young developer, I would find it useful to get some advice regarding things to think about in order to develop a high-quality application. In my college courses, most teachers emphasized input ...
13
votes
6answers
439 views
Peer review for tests just like code reviews
Does anyone practice the "code review" process for functional tests? Do you find it useful? The way that my current employer practices SCRUM we include functional testing as part of our "must have ...
12
votes
5answers
547 views
How does one determine whether or not to rewrite poorly-designed code? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
When is a BIG Rewrite the answer?
I'm on a small team that's been handed a poorly-written, half-finished 2D Java game. Our objective is to do as much as we can to make ...
12
votes
7answers
553 views
Is there really a relationship between number of people assigned to a project and the number of defects?
Here is a quote from a training manual at work regarding SLIM and software estimation:
Notice also, there is a correlation between Effort and Defects. This means, the more people there are ...
12
votes
2answers
434 views
What are some good books/resources/ways to learn TDD? [closed]
As a grad student, I haven't really written anything to test my code. Usually what we do is just run the code on some test input and if the output result looks okay or as we expected then we just ...
11
votes
7answers
2k views
How do big companies of software developers check for bugs in their programs?
I was wondering how big companies of software developers check for bugs in their programs.
Do they just test it on several computers?
11
votes
8answers
673 views
Do you believe it's a good idea for Software Engineers to have to work as Quality Assurance Engineers for some period of time?
I believe it is. Why?
I've encountered many Software Engineers who believe they are somehow superior to QA engineers. I think it may help quench this belief if they do the job of a QA engineer for ...
10
votes
7answers
744 views
Objective Metrics for Software Quality
There are various types of quality that can be measured in software products, e.g. fitness for purpose (e.g. end use), maintainability, efficiency. Some of these are somewhat subjective or domain ...
10
votes
4answers
635 views
How can I update a large legacy codebase to meet specific quality standards?
There is a lot of information about tools and techniques for improving legacy codebases, but I haven't come across any successful real world case studies. Most advice is on the micro level, and while ...
10
votes
3answers
688 views
How does the use of a rules engine impact the design, implementation, and performance of an application?
I'm interested in the ability of rules engines to:
launch and iterate over business driven logic
have "business users" perform the actual modification of those rules rather than developers
...
9
votes
9answers
723 views
Does code generation increase the code quality?
Arguing for code generation, I am looking for some examples of ways in which it increases code quality. To clarify what I mean by code generation, I can talk only about a project of mine:
We use XML ...
9
votes
7answers
2k views
What is the difference between Static code analysis and code review?
I just wanted to know what the difference is between static code analysis and code review. How are each of these two done? More specifically, what are the tools available today for code review/static ...
9
votes
3answers
514 views
Do we need test data or can we rely on unit tests and manual testing?
We're currently working on a medium/large PHP/MySQL project. We're doing unit testing with PHPUnit & QUnit and we have two full time testers that are manually testing the application. Our test ...
8
votes
3answers
494 views
How come verification does not include actual testing?
Having read a lot about this topic --- such as on this Software Testing Fundamentals site on verification and validation and Software Testing and Quality Assurance: Theory and Practice by Naik and ...
7
votes
13answers
725 views
How is quality important to the programmer, the person? [closed]
I didn't ask how the quality of the software is important to the product itself, the customers/users, the manager or the company. I want to know how it is important to the programmer that build it.
...
7
votes
8answers
538 views
Quality vs Time
I have heard of developers who work with code which is a complete mess because originally the code was quickly developed and the quality was not there in the first place.
Its always good to get ...
7
votes
4answers
558 views
One-week release cycle: how do I make this feasible?
At my company (3-yr-old web industry startup), we have frequent problems with the product team saying "aaaah this is a crisis patch it now!" (doesn't everybody?)
This has an impact on the ...
7
votes
8answers
854 views
What's the most important feature of quality software?
This question is along the same lines as this one, but instead of talking about quality of code, I'm talking about the final product from the users' perspective. If you had limited time / budget, and ...
7
votes
6answers
423 views
How do I locate Uncalled Functions?
I am looking at some C/C++ code that appears to have functions that are defined, but never used. This is a pretty tedious process to trace through the code and verify. I've done some surveys and there ...
7
votes
5answers
681 views
Outsourcing Quality Assurance and Testing [closed]
I was recently approached by a software firm that specializes in Quality Assurance and Testing.
Up until this point, the developers at our (small) company have been responsible for their own QA for ...
7
votes
11answers
300 views
What is the correlation between the quality of the software development process and the quality of the product? [closed]
I used to believe the practicing "good" software development methods tends to yield a better product in the long run. However, I've seen quite a few cases where "quick-and-dirty" \ "brute-force" \ ...
7
votes
1answer
262 views
Difference between software inspection and verification
I was reading about software inspection in Software Engineering by Ian Summerville and I came across the term Software inspection and I started reading about it on Wikipedia. I am unable to understand ...
7
votes
3answers
238 views
How to measure external quality of software
For my thesis, I am doing research into the characteristics of Behavior Driven Development (BDD). One of the BDD claims is that by specifying the requirements in a ubiquitous language together with ...
7
votes
2answers
666 views
Is there any work into the application of the Halstead complexity measures to determine software quality?
In 1977, Maurice Howard Halstead introduced his complexity measures for software systems, which included measurements of the program vocabulary, program length, volume, difficulty, effort, and an ...
6
votes
9answers
846 views
Review quality of code
I have been asked to quality review two code bases. I've never done anything like that, and need advice on how to perform it and report it.
Background
There are two providers of code, one in VB and ...
6
votes
6answers
349 views
Qualifying 'happiness' in software development?
It occurred to me today that often the real goal of questions asked on sites such as this one (where the questions tend to be more open-ended than say, SO) is for the OP to become happier upon ...
6
votes
3answers
354 views
Why is implementing copy-paste in a touch screen based smartphone such a big deal?
When Apple didn't implement copy-pasting on the iPhone since version 1, I had just assumed it was a UI issue (Eg. they were waiting until they figured out a good UI for it). Now however the idea is ...
6
votes
3answers
859 views
Can defect containment metrics be readily applied at an organizational level when there is only a consistant organizational process framework?
Defect containment metrics, such as total defect containment effectiveness (TDCE) and phase containment effectiveness (PCE), can be used to give a good indicator of the quality of the process. TDCE ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
How to determine the effectiveness of a code review process?
We've introduced a code review process within our organisation and it seems to be working well. However, I would like to be able to measure the effectiveness of the process over time, i.e. are we not ...
5
votes
7answers
309 views
What is a programmer's role in error-checking text content?
As a primarily web-based programmer, a lot of my projects involve significant amounts of text content.
In my previous job, I frequently worked with a project manager notorious for his unwillingness ...
5
votes
3answers
281 views
How to deal with the trail of bugs?
Every release, our trail of bugs keeps on increasing. These are valid bugs however, we also have to write new features to stay in the competition. Also, those features will be more used than the ...
5
votes
3answers
400 views
How to learn/become capable of providing quality app design?
I'm interested in things a programmer should learn/know to provide extremely good application architecture design.
As known any design can be regarded as good one for certain circumstances but when ...
5
votes
3answers
419 views
Inspection, code review - is it really testing?
ISTQB, Wikipedia or other sources classify verification acitivities (reviews etc.) as a static testing, yet other do not. If we can say that peer reviews and inspections are actually a kind of a ...
5
votes
2answers
162 views
Pushing for greater automated testing on a QA team [closed]
I'm a junior developer joining a QA team at my company. The QA team I had been interacting with while working as a developer was very solid and the business had been very good about encouraging and ...
5
votes
2answers
655 views
ISO, Six Sigma, SEI-CMM, etc., in Fortune 500 companies
Do large corporations and product companies follow any standard quality models/processes at all?
For example, I have seen that many large organizations have proprietary processes in IT and software ...
