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Notes on Software Quality

anthonyhobday.com

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Re: Notes on Software Quality

#61

Post by Lutger »

A more rigorous definition of software quality can be found in ISO 25010.

> The quality of a system is the degree to which the system satisfies the stated and implied needs of its various stakeholders, and thus provides value. Those stakeholders' needs (functionality, performance, security, maintainability, etc.) are precisely what is represented in the quality model...

Here is a decent summary: https://iso25000.com/en/iso-25000-standards/iso-25010

Not exactly software quality, but adjacent, is the capability catalog of dora: https://dora.dev/capabilities/

Dora is about 'software delivery and operations performance' and has a vast body of empirical research underpinning it.

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#63

Post by sam_lowry_ »

amarant wrote: post #17

I disagree with the initial premise >Quality is the absence of problems A low quality code base can be problem free if surrounding circumstances are forgiving enough. Conversely, a high quality codebase can have a lot of problems in difficult circumstances. I haven't thought about it long enough to have a definition of quality that I'm really happy with, but I think a "resilience to hardships" would be a better defin…

> circumstances are forgiving enough.

I once saw an organization that migrated from Weblogic to Kubernetes, keeping the rule to have a least two instances of each app but forgetting that that their Weblogic had distributed transactions and without implementing something similar in Kubernetes.

They happily serve users, helped by low traffic and low expectations. Occasional data corruption and race conditions give work to the support maintenance teams.

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#64

Post by Anoian »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #60
Yoofie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. We cant even get 10 dentists to agree which toothpaste to use. Getting 100 experts to agree on anything is a miracle.

Because different toothpaste is helpful for different cases and reasons?

The same applies to software though.

Most people with bad vision want higher contrast for text, while most people with dyslexia want text with lower contrast.

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#65

Post by ____mr____ »

scott_w wrote: post #54
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that definition. If your software solves a problem that many users face, that makes it useful and, presumably, valuable, but it doesn't mean it's of higher quality than niche software of relatively little use.

OP didn’t say “little-used” software, they said “nobody,” and I think this was meant to be taken literally in this context. Software that has 0 users is of no use to anyone by definition.

If you are using quality as a metric then something having more quality would mean it having more value to more people. So a piece of software working 95% of the time to 1 mil users is deemed "of higher quality" by this metric than a piece of software working 100% of the time to 1k users. I don't think this definition for quality is good at all

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#66

Post by scott_w »

____mr____ wrote: post #65
scott_w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP didn’t say “little-used” software, they said “nobody,” and I think this was meant to be taken literally in this context. Software that has 0 users is of no use to anyone by definition.

If you are using quality as a metric then something having more quality would mean it having more value to more people. So a piece of software working 95% of the time to 1 mil users is deemed "of higher quality" by this metric than a piece of software working 100% of the time to 1k users. I don't think this definition for quality is good at all

You’re still missing the point: software used by LITERALLY 0 PEOPLE cannot be useful. Whether it’s well written is completely irrelevant because it, by definition, is providing value to NOBODY.

Yes, such software exists.

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#67

Post by lovlar »

HDBaseT wrote: post #48
jihadjihad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cant even get 10 dentists to agree which toothpaste to use. The 1 in 10 who didn’t recommend $PASTECORP made up the 9 in 10 who recommended $NUTRAPASTE

Toothpaste brand/variant, by and large, doesn't matter. There is over 30 different variants of Colgate Toothpaste, do dentist believe ALL the Colgate ones are better than the alternatives?

Fluoride is good for teeth but not for your gut and the rest of the body

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#68

Post by fragmede »

HDBaseT wrote: post #48
jihadjihad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cant even get 10 dentists to agree which toothpaste to use. The 1 in 10 who didn’t recommend $PASTECORP made up the 9 in 10 who recommended $NUTRAPASTE

Toothpaste brand/variant, by and large, doesn't matter. There is over 30 different variants of Colgate Toothpaste, do dentist believe ALL the Colgate ones are better than the alternatives?

Oh but it does, they just don't give the US access to the good stuff. Sensodyne Repair & Protect with NovaMin is available in Europe, but because American Crapitalism, aka money aka FDA, you can't get it in the US.

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#69

Post by wavemode »

lovlar wrote: post #67
HDBaseT wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toothpaste brand/variant, by and large, doesn't matter. There is over 30 different variants of Colgate Toothpaste, do dentist believe ALL the Colgate ones are better than the alternatives?

Fluoride is good for teeth but not for your gut and the rest of the body

I don't think you're supposed to be eating the toothpaste.

Re: Notes on Software Quality

#70

Post by manwe150 »

HDBaseT wrote: post #48
jihadjihad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We cant even get 10 dentists to agree which toothpaste to use. The 1 in 10 who didn’t recommend $PASTECORP made up the 9 in 10 who recommended $NUTRAPASTE

Toothpaste brand/variant, by and large, doesn't matter. There is over 30 different variants of Colgate Toothpaste, do dentist believe ALL the Colgate ones are better than the alternatives?

Sometimes yes. My dentist explained she recommended Colgate because none of their 30 equal choices used to contain stannous floride, so it was easier to shop by brand than search for which ingredient to avoid specifically amongst the competitors 30 choices
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