• GoofyGuy (8/4/2014)


    Matt Miller wrote:

    ... depending on the type of process you're dealing with, it may not be physically possible to test every single permutation, so - yes in some cases you might not be able to completely dummy-proof or fail-proof some jobs.

    Maybe not, but it's no excuse to bypass developing the appropriate test cases, either.

    The time spent actually writing software should be almost vanishingly small, compared to the time expended on design up front and testing in back.

    I never said that it was, but there's a difference between having appropriate test case coverage and accounting for every single possible failure. This is where the old "Perfect is the enemy of Good" adage comes into play. You account for enough failure scenarios to meet your performance and functional specifications (usually you exceed the expected spec by some acceptable amount), and perhaps you document the other failure modes or at least detect that your success condition has not been met. Still - some failures may occur, even in well thought-out ones.

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    Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?