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It feels close to just saying, make your code better and you will see less bugs.
I don't disagree but the product environment has a lot to do with how features get deployed and how closely a developer can match the real life deployment to their development setup.
World class experts make mistakes all the time, I think learning how to address bugs is probably a more valuable skill.
> My “trick” during that final year was simple: I always tried to write correctly, not just when I was asked to, but all the time. After a year of subconscious improvements, I aced the exam. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.
I'm not sure I understand the argument or value of this post? It feels close to just saying, make your code better and you will see less bugs. I don't disagree but the product environment has a lot to do with how features get deployed and how closely a developer can match the real life deployment to their development setup. World class experts make mistakes all the time, I think learning how to address bugs is probab…
This is just “think correctly, and often, then, no more bugs”. Not helpful?
I clicked on this because of the crazy title but its actually a really inisghtful article, e.g. "Conversely, there are people with commitment issues; they want to experiment non-stop and thus have no faith in robustness." ... like there's this belief that bugs will just happen anyway so why worry about them. But the authors point is that a little bit of extra thought and work can make a lot of difference to quality.
Care to bring home the thesis on how that’s actually really insightful?
This feels like fluff. You can think a few steps all you like but bugs will creep in, those you can’t think about, those in areas you don’t quite understand, those that require weird sequences of events.
> My “trick” during that final year was simple: I always tried to write correctly, not just when I was asked to, but all the time. After a year of subconscious improvements, I aced the exam. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Ah, but perfect is the enemy of good.
I don't think anyone says you should just casually ship bugs. Quite the contrary, most are ok with the idea that, if you see a bug, fix the bug. But, there can be no doubt that there is diminishing returns on chasing down every potential bug. This reads to me like the idea that a rich person walking down the road wouldn't pick up a $20 they happen to see at their feet. Of course they will. Why not? What they don't do…
Why is it usually a waste of time? Because people rarely lose multiple bills of money, and if they do, our vision system is well equipped to spot the other bills quickly.
The opposite is often true with software in my experience.
When there is a bug, it's often because the software is in a state of imbalance and confusion, and there are multiple bugs nearby.
And humans tend to be relatively bad at spotting bugs.
So, when you see a bug it is usually worth spending a moment to reflect on whether you've fixed the bug properly and whether there are other bugs in the vicinity. It is likely to be worth it just for the bug fixes.
But there's also the learning effect that comes with it as described by TFA.