Cleaning out the Bookmarks #5 – Hope Driven Development
I’m not sure why I bookmarked this one as I disagree with the authors point and the way he presents it.
http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2009/05/12/hdd/
Read it and make up your own mind. This is the kind of post that advocates you assume the software your writing is going to be responsible for sending somebody to Mars and get them back safety. Every check needs to be rechecked, every exception handled, every event and situation handled gracefully.
Most of the time we aren’t designing the auto pilot for a Boeing 747 and I think “hoping” or assuming certain things will be true is ok. I consider software bugs a sign of progress and not necessarily a measure of quality.
Also I have the opinion that if your always expecting a user to enter A and then they start entering B and you give them a stupid error message they’re going to figure out how to get B into the system anyway. I’d rather the software blow up in my face, get a bug report back, and learn the business or customer really needs a new feature or behavior to handle a new business need or some kind of growth.