BorlandTalk.com Borland discussion newsgroups   Archives   FAQ   Search   Memberlist   Usergroups   Register   Profile   Log in to check your private messages   Log in  Is software reliability important? Goto page 1, 2  Next          BorlandTalk.com Forum Index -> Delphi Non-Technical View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message Chris Burrows Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 1:54 pm    Post subject: Is software reliability important? Recent discussions in these groups on the quality and reliability of the current version of Delphi and the lack of bug-fixes include views implying that we don't need to worry to much about bugs as users expect them anyway. This attitude needs to be challenged. For a start, a thought-provoking interview with Niklaus Wirth on the subject of software reliability can be found at: http://www.eptacom.net/pubblicazioni/pub_eng/wirth.html The following are pertinent extracts "Good enough software" is rarely good enough" "In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity." "Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings. It is no secret that human beings suffer from imperfection, limited reliability, and impatience - among other things. Add to it that they have become demanding, which leads to the request for rapid, high performance in return for the requested high salaries. Work under constant time pressure, however, results in unsatisfactory, faulty products. Generally, the hope is that corrections will not only be easy, because software is immaterial, but that the custormers will be willing to share the cost." "I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages. For the time being, however, this is practicable only for some "niche products". The niche will expand when a growing number of people will voice their dissatisfaction with poor software." Chris Burrows CFB Software http://www.cfbsoftware.com Back to top Ingvar Nilsen Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 2:43 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? Chris Burrows wrote: Quote: "I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages. Yeah, fine, time to dust off some old compilers Wonder if he knows what a "structured language" is.. -- Ingvar Nilsen Back to top Chris Burrows Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 2:53 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Martin Lafferty" <martinl (AT) prel (DOT) co.uk> wrote Quote: "However, we know that it is better if each basic concept is represented by a single, designated language construct. Not only does this reduce the effort of learning, but it reduces the volume of the language's description and thereby the possibilities of inconsistency and of misunderstanding. " This has always seemed completely true to me, and yet languages become every more complex with ever more ways of expressing the same basic concepts. When I read Larry Wall's PERL book I got fed up with the constant mantra "There's more than one way to do it" because to me, this was an admission of failure. Exactly. I had my first experience with PERL earlier this year and choked when I saw that statement. Chris Burrows CFB Software http://www.cfbsoftware.com Back to top Andrew Gabb Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 3:59 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? Chris Burrows wrote: Quote: Recent discussions in these groups on the quality and reliability of the current version of Delphi and the lack of bug-fixes include views implying that we don't need to worry to much about bugs as users expect them anyway. This attitude needs to be challenged. For a start, a thought-provoking interview with Niklaus Wirth on the subject of software reliability can be found at: Wirth was an academic, albeit a relatively smart one back in the 70s (some were and are abysmally stupid). As he progressed, he moved further and further away from the real world. So I certainly wouldn't start there. It's impossible to develop any large complex system with zero defects. So it all becomes a tradeoff of what your users expect and can live with, and how quickly and cost-effectively you can deliver it. Microsoft couldn't possibly meet their marketing-driven objectives with 6-sigma quality, and they've proved that they don't need to. And reliability is only one quality factor. What about usability for example? Or what the software *does* when an defect strikes (survivability?). It all depends on your market and how they might react to quality problems. I can't afford to write 6-sigma software either - my clients won't pay for it. So it becomes a matter of compromise - fortunately my clients have been somewhat tempered by Microsoft and the unreliability of software on the web in general. I'm about to swap from Netscape to Outlook/IE (dammit!) because Netscape/Mozilla has become too fragile (*my* assessment) and has dropped functionality that I seriously need (and which Outlook has). The future also looks bleak with open-source, so I vote with my feet. I trade off the swap with the embuggerance it might cause me. My final analogy is something I call Terminal Hotel Disease (or 'Ainslee Disease' named after a specific hotel in Canberra), which is a common problem world-wide. I used to travel a lot and stay in 3* hotels/motels. Quite often I'd find that the rooms in a hotel were getting crummier and crummier as the management cut back on maintenance and cleaning. Eventually they went broke and sold out at a loss. 'Health centres' start selling life memberships cheap (and you know how much *they* are likely to be worth). Travel agencies sell cutprice travel with big discounts for payments long in advance. Going down. Andrew -- Andrew Gabb email: [email]agabb (AT) tpgi (DOT) com.au[/email] Adelaide, South Australia phone: +61 8 8342-1021, fax: +61 8 8269-3280 ----- Back to top Jim Cooper Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 4:51 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? Quote: Recent discussions in these groups on the quality and reliability of the current version of Delphi and the lack of bug-fixes include views implying that we don't need to worry to much about bugs as users expect them anyway. I think that's an implication too far I doubt you'd find anyone suggesting fewer bugs would be better. However it is certainly unrealistic to expect zero bugs in any complex piece of software. Correctness proofs are just not viable for large pieces of software, and to my knowledge have only ever been done in certain restricted circumstances. How many and which bugs are "allowable" in a released application is a debate with little point, IMO, as experience and opinions vary too much. Eg I have zero problems with D7 bugs, whilst others apparently find it completely unusable (with all shades in between, of course). Quote: For a start, a thought-provoking interview with Niklaus Wirth I found some of the opinions a little naive, but that could be because it's an old interview now. Quote: "Good enough software" is rarely good enough" Demonstrably false. You are running an operating system right now that is "good enough" (and I can say that without even knowing which one it is). And there is at least one other dev tool we both use that falls into that category :-) Quote: "In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity." If he was talking about medicine then he might have a better point Perfection is a noble goal, but one we rarely, if ever, achieve (I'm obviously not talking about myself here <vbg>). Cheers, Jim Cooper ____________________________________________ Jim Cooper [email]jcooper (AT) tabdee (DOT) ltd.uk[/email] Tabdee Ltd http://www.tabdee.ltd.uk TurboSync - Connecting Delphi with your Palm ____________________________________________ Back to top Alessandro Federici Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 5:18 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Chris Burrows" <info (AT) cfbsoftware (DOT) com.au> wrote Quote: Recent discussions in these groups on the quality and reliability of the current version of Delphi and the lack of bug-fixes include views implying that we don't need to worry to much about bugs as users expect them anyway. Right, but the issue is that even if they might expect them and be tolerant with them for a week or two, it doesn't mean they shouldn't get patched in the current version. Quote: "In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity." That actually depends on what you consider more important: deliver quality or make money. They are both important of course, but how you prioritize them has immediate results in the bug-fixing process. Quote: [..] Work under constant time pressure, however, results in unsatisfactory, faulty products. [..] <speculation> Which is where it all boils down to IMO, expecially in the RAD division at Borland, where the same team has to deal with 4 products (or any close variant to this). </speculation> Quote: For the time being, however, this is practicable only for some "niche products". The niche will expand when a growing number of people will voice their dissatisfaction with poor software." I hope so )) but let me add something to this: why is it that people find ok to blame Borland/Microsoft/whatever for their bugs but never mention they could have found them by just doing a little research before (i.e. using the downloadable trials)? Isn't the fault on both sides? There's plenty of options in our market. Why is the sloppiness of customers starting to write code before thinking ok, and Borland/Microsoft/whatever bug's aren't? Just wondering... -- Regards, Alessandro Federici RemObjects Software, Inc. http://www.remobjects.com Back to top Ingvar Nilsen Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 5:32 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? Alessandro Federici wrote: Quote: That actually depends on what you consider more important: deliver quality or make money. They are both important of course, but how you prioritize them has immediate results in the bug-fixing process. This is an important point, very important...!!!! I can imagine various views, attitudes regarding this and imagine tough negotiations in certain companies <g> about this. At the end of the day, lack of fixes and an attempt to "milk" customers will backfire, "at the end of the day". -- Ingvar Nilsen Back to top Alessandro Federici Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 5:47 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Ingvar Nilsen" <telcontr@[Remove-This-Part]online.no> wrote Quote: At the end of the day, lack of fixes and an attempt to "milk" customers will backfire, "at the end of the day". That's what I've always been saying when arguing that saying "Dx outsold Dx-1" is really shortsighted but hey, what do I know? <G> Back to top Kristofer Skaug Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 9:35 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Alessandro Federici" wrote Quote: Right, but the issue is that even if they might expect them and be tolerant with them for a week or two, it doesn't mean they shouldn't get patched in the current version. BINGO! Quote: That actually depends on what you consider more important: deliver quality or make money. They are both important of course, but how you prioritize them has immediate results in the bug-fixing process. There's another aspect to this, which I think we all know from our own professional practice: Knowingly shipping defective software (and subsequently not being allowed time to fix it) has a negative influence on morale on the part of the developers. From DeMarco&Lister, "Peopleware": <quote> [M]anagers tend to think of quality as just another attribute of the product, something that may be supplied in varying degrees according to the needs of the marketplace (...). The builders [on the other hand] tend to impose quality standards of their own. The minimum that will satisfy them is more or less the best quality they have achieved in the past. This is invariably a higher standard than what the market requires and is willing to pay for. (...) </quote> When the profitability of each release is always the highest goal, motivation and quality consciousness within an organisation will diminish over time, it becomes a negative spiral. It is only to be hoped that this is not a manifest problem at Borland. Quote: ok to blame Borland/Microsoft/whatever for their bugs but never mention they could have found them by just doing a little research before (i.e. using the downloadable trials)? I actually did this. Downloaded D7 Architect trial and ran my core library test suites on it. This resulted in the detection of a quite embarrassing compiler bug, new in D7, which I reported in QC#2258. At that time (September 2002), I was 100% convinced that Borland would scramble to fix it in a patch within a month or two, max. And I silently thought that I'd buy D7, just to be "up to date" (and in spite of the relative lack of new features), as soon as the patch was out and verified. It never came, so I didn't buy D7. Kristofer Back to top Ixtlan Guest Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003 10:39 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Andrew Gabb" <agabb (AT) tpgi (DOT) com.au> wrote Quote: The future also looks bleak with open-source, so I vote with my feet. I trade off the swap with the embuggerance it might cause me. Where did you get this impression from, that the future looks bleak with open-source???? Just wondering why. As far as I'm concerned, 5 years ago I shared your bleak outlook on OS, but today, nearly all my software development is based on OS, and to me the future of OS looks very bright indeed! Ixtlan Back to top Dennis Landi Guest Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 4:57 am    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Jim Cooper" <jcooper (AT) tabdee (DOT) ltd.uk> wrote Quote: "In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensible luxury, but a simple necessity." If he was talking about medicine then he might have a better point Perfection is a noble goal, but one we rarely, if ever, achieve (I'm obviously not talking about myself here <vbg>). I agree completely. Most of us strive for zero defects. But lets face it, most of use are not writing software for NASA's space shuttle systems... Much software has an intentionally short-life span. And even for more substantial systems that are expensive to build and intended to pay for itself over time (up-time), critical bugs can be identified and (drum roll, please) FIXED. QA - TESTING, is a fact of life, and part of any serious development life cycle. QA is predicated upon the acknowledgement that bugs exist, period. That acknowledgement has become a corner-stone of modern software development. The question isn't whether or not bugs SHOULD exist. That is just naive in the extreme. The question is: what mechanism is in place to catch the bugs as efficiently as one's resources allow. But even after the system has been deployed and gone live, bugs can still be intelligently tracked and addressed. (obviously) From a *theory* stand-point this is a non-issue... -dennis Back to top Ingvar Nilsen Guest Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2003 7:39 am    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? Kristofer Skaug wrote: Quote: When the profitability of each release is always the highest goal, motivation and quality consciousness within an organisation will diminish over time, it becomes a negative spiral. It is only to be hoped that this is not a manifest problem at Borland. Well said! I have made myself the same thoghts. BTW, what you point your finger at is a well known fact in most software companies. -- Ingvar Nilsen Back to top Chris Burrows Guest Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2003 2:39 am    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Jim Cooper" <jcooper (AT) tabdee (DOT) ltd.uk> Quote: I found some of the opinions a little naive, but that could be because it's an old interview now. 1997? Old? A more recent, less academic article, discussing the attitudes that concern me (expectation / tolerance of bugs, lack of interest in fixing bugs, bugs are only an inconvenience not a real problem, bugs are inevitable etc. etc.) is: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/29/tech/main551492.shtml The last thing I want to happen is for lawyers to get in on the act. However, I believe it might be only when software manufacturers face the threat of being sued for negligence or whatever, that they will start to take software quality issues seriously. It is up to us, as professional developers, to do what we can to ensure this doesn't need to happen. Chris Burrows CFB Software http://www.cfbsoftware.com Back to top Kristofer Skaug Guest Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2003 7:14 am    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Chris Burrows" wrote Quote: 1997? Old? well, a whole epidemic of dotcom-quality software production philosophy has washed over us and gone again in the meantime. Quote: It is up to us, as professional developers, to do what we can to ensure this doesn't need to happen. True. If there are minimum quality (safety, reliability) standards imposed on the production of cars (to get "road qualified"), airplanes, ships, toasters, shower gel bottles and video recorders, why shouldn't there be a minimum quality standard for software? In my own workplace we spend far more time testing and certifying the custom hardware that our software is running on/with, than testing the software itself ( - which is patchable). Now there's admittedly fairly limited opportunity for 3-year-olds to get their fingers jammed in our software, or for airheads to use it as an experimental pet-hairdryer, but OTOH our software *does* run the risk of damaging upto half a billion Euro's worth of satellite hardware with one well-timed crash. So... yeah I've been wondering why oh why Kristofer Back to top John Elrick Guest Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2003 9:50 pm    Post subject: Re: Is software reliability important? "Chris Burrows" <info (AT) cfbsoftware (DOT) com.au> wrote Quote: Recent discussions in these groups on the quality and reliability of the current version of Delphi and the lack of bug-fixes include views implying that we don't need to worry to much about bugs as users expect them anyway. This attitude needs to be challenged. For a start, a thought-provoking interview with Niklaus Wirth on the subject of software reliability can be found at: http://www.eptacom.net/pubblicazioni/pub_eng/wirth.html The following are pertinent extracts "Good enough software" is rarely good enough" Wirth writes software...he doesn't buy it. The average buyer looks for: The first solution on his/her radar that solves a relevant business problem and is reasonably stable for a reasonable cost. That is the reality of the marketplace. 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