Do the Devs even test their code anymore?

This needs to be quoted more.

I hated it when the game would act as if your paddle was not even there if it was in the wrong place. That sucked.

That's actually fairly relevant and somewhat clever.
Who are you and does the real graystar_blaster know you're using his account?

I thought that was a hardware problem with the controllers.

I agree. There were times when things were much less complicated, but "better",
no, not really, depending on your definitions of "better" and "Golden Age", I guess.

This, I disagree with as a blanket statement.

To be sure, different segments of the software industry prioritize quality differently, but
to say it was never valued at all? No.

Quality has always been a tradeoff between delivery and expense, and sometimes,
it gets treated like the ugly redheaded stepchild of the trio in some segments,
but completely omitted from the equation?

Even the CoH devs haven't descended that far.

Agreed, particularly with point b. The end result of *that*, definitely shows
in the end-product, and not in a good way.

I think we're seeing that more frequently here also, hence my initial post.

We do, and rightfully so imho.

That's basically what I'm calling for here -- "Raise the Bar" ... a bit.

Again, I disagree somewhat, as outlined above.

What I think is more common, is that the *consumer* doesn't seem to hold software
companies to the same standard they'd hold an accountant, doctor, etc. to,
except in certain areas (banking, being an obvious case), and if the customer
isn't concerned about it, the developer is less concerned as well.

That said, I for one, am concerned about it.

I don't expect 0 defect software here, but I'd like to see the quality standard
raised above the apparent minimum I've been seeing recently.


Regards,
4

However high you think your standards are, there exist people with higher ones. Or in this case, more rigorous ones.

Worth keeping in mind, when deciding which standard is appropriate to judge other people upon.

If by 'consumer' you also mean 'employer', 'project manager', 'direct supervisor' and 'coworkers', then we can agree.

It's not just about customers. Internal projects get treated the same way.

Arcana's point is, you can't randomly go 'well, all that math takes too long, I'm just going to guess' as an accountant. Programmers have been permitted to do that as a profession, and that's a problem.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Exactly the point I was making...

So, explain to me how these two statements do NOT conflict?

If some folks have higher standards, and they're in the industry, then clearly
the industry *does* care about quality.

If your first statement is true and the industry does not actually care about
quality, then clearly their standards are not higher.

You can't have it both ways Arcanaville.

The point I'm trying to make, is that the apparent standards exhibited here
with recent releases appear lower than mine - both as a customer, and as
a programmer.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make <shrug>.


Regards,
4

Just because some people have higher standards than others in an industry, does not mean that the industry cares about quality.

When I was in college, taking programming classes, the instructor told us about one programmer he had the experience of being employed in the company with. That programmer, in stead of using a looping bit of software to run the same function 100 times, actually wrote 100 instances of the same function. All because he got paid by the line. 100 lines of repetitive code nets him more cash than 5 lines of code that would do the exact same thing.

As long as the program worked, the customer was content. Despite the fact that the programmer was bloating the code needlessly just to make more money.

Now, I'm not saying that Paragon Studios is like that. I'm just saying that you can't say that an industry cares about quality just because some people that work in that industry have higher standards. It all depends on where those people are placed in that industry and how much leeway they have with deadlines and costs.

Consumers have little choice but to use commercial software as provided, bugs and all. It's not as if they can just write their own word processor, spreadsheet, browser, or MMO game. They can, on the other hand, treat themselves with over-the-counter remedies for most everyday ailments, and balance their own checkbooks or do their own taxes. I think most software companies are keenly aware of the complete control they have over the features in, and quality of, the software they produce. The consumer is complacent out of any lack of alternatives (moving from one crappy piece of software to some other crappy piece of software is something of a Hobson's Choice).

Now, I will definitely agree with your observations regarding the quality of software "lately", but then again for me "lately" has been in effect for over 20 years. I wouldn't have hired 90% of the Computer Science students I graduated with, and that was in 1990. How much has really changed since then in this respect?

Not if they are a statistically insignificant number, and therefore have effectively zero representative value for the industry as a whole. And that number is vanishingly small. People will give lip service to quality, but would you jeopardize your job for it; your entire career for it; will you walk away rather than sacrifice it; will you replace yourself with someone better qualified to ensure it? The number of such people is exceedingly rare.


While its always a good thing to advocate for better quality, step back a bit from claiming the people you're asking it from are either extraordinary in their lack of it, or equally that you obviously know how to remedy such an institutional problem. Lots of people try, virtually all fail, and claiming to be different in that regard is an extraordinary claim. It is, and yet is not, a simple problem to solve. Its easy to express: virtually impossible to enact.

Well, couldn't they at least fix the typos and mis-spellings?

The scary thing to me is that this error is something you couldn't have gotten me to sign off on with a gun to my head, and I'm not an academically trained civil engineer:



And yet, at least it caused a change to both building codes and explicit professional standards. Name one time ever when a computer programmer error caused a change to the way the profession was managed.

Trick question: you can't, because the profession isn't managed. We are unlicensed, we have no professional code of ethics, we have no professional code of conduct, we have not even a vague nebulous set of professional responsibilities. And that's why no matter how many mistakes we make or how large they are, no one else is required to learn from them or even hear about them except by chance.

Sorry. You must work with complete buffoons (assuming you're in the software
industry).

I personally know of several actual, tangible examples from at least two companies,
right off the top of my head, where quality was very much in the forefront of procedure,
review, and in some cases, enforcement.

I'm pretty certain I'm not the only programmer in the entire world that has ever
had that experience.

I find your assertion of "vanishingly small" highly suspect, especially when you
preface it just a few posts earlier with mutually exclusive and contradictory
statements.

Sorry, I'm not buying the Wild West programming standards you're implying are
the norm.

Of course, this is starting to get pretty far afield from the original post.

If you're pleased with the quality of recent releases, good for you.

I'm not, and I believe they can and should, pay more attention to the quality
that they're pushing out the door going forward.


Regards,
4

i.e. Your Mileage May Vary
i.e.2. YMMV

I personally find the gaming industry to be a big culprit of quantity over quality. Look at Modern Warfare 3 for example, made over a billion dollars, yet it's not that much different from it's predecessor in game play or graphics.

And you are deluding yourself if your denying that that's how things work in reality. It goes on everywhere in every industry.

Maybe Stateside that's the case but in the UK its managed mainly by the BCS - a professional body by the same Royal Charters as are Doctors, Dentists etc. We have both professional ethics and professional standards set out in the charter. The IEE also do some as does the IAP. I can't remember the EU body off the top of my head which covers the rest of Europe. All work closely together.
University courses are based upon these standards although judjing from the comments I see from US based programmers here and on other forums it would appear there is little regulation regarding standards there. Indeed membership confers the letters MBCS which is indicative of the same level of knowledge as an Honours degree and requires that to be maintained.

You are right in that the profession isn't licensed (in most parts of the world at least) and membership of a professional body isn't mandatory however the rest of your statement is totally false.

Perhaps you need to do some research and find out which professional body DOES manage it in your part of the world.

Let me guess, you are one of those people that peruse an entire newspaper just looking for typos and poor grammar, and then say "This is all crap" without even reading the content of any of the stories.

It is quite simple. There is only time to fix so much stuff before a patch has to go live. I have played on a game where the player community was much like you, and hounded the game mercilessly about every single bug that was in every patch. You know what happened. Patches slowed down, and eventually they stopped. The game died and went away, despite being a great and enjoyable game (Earth and Beyond for those of you that remember it).

As long as none of the bugs that exist are game breaking (and none of the ones that you have listed are, the game still functions just fine), and remain quality of life issues, then the vitriol and insanity that you spew is quite misguided. They fix the QoL issues as they can.

Be quiet or the game will die!!

DOOOMM!!! from bug fix requests!!

Or it could be that w/e game you're talking about was so buggy that people stopped paying for it. I doubt they shut down a profitable enterprise because of some complaints.

In light of the news of a company accidentally deleting their entire game...I put nothing past nobody.

MIL-STD-1815 AKA The ADA mandate.

Which was the response to the profession's lack of quality control and standards. So no particular error just an overwhelming number of them.

Edit: Your commentary on the Hyatt beam is also off. That engineering change would have been fine if the beam were stronger. The problem was that no one had bothered to do the calculations to see if the beam could take the load.

It was a response to the Department of Defense wanting to impose a standard programming language. It had nothing specifically to do with quality control. To the extent the language was designed to be more structured and modular, the intent was for the language itself to promote better coding practice. But 1815 didn't specify *how* Ada was to be used, and there was no corresponding standards ever drafted for best practices in system design that incorporated the language.

There *were* standards of project management at the time, but anyone who's seen those in the DoD for this period of time claiming they improved the methodology of software engineering is insane.

To be specific, the Ada directive:
a) didn't impact the profession overall, just one of its clients
b) didn't actually specifically address any quality issue, only standardization
c) just forced us to code in Ada, for one client, for a while.

And the legacy of Ada is that most of us talk about Ada more than we use it. Much like OSI: we talk about it, but we don't design around it. Ask the MPLS guys what layer they were targeting MPLS for when that was invented. For that matter, there's RFC3439. And even the Ada mandate itself lasted for only about twelve years: it doesn't exist now.


Err, no. First of all, the hanger rod change doubled the load on the lower box beam connection point. To say it would have been fine if the beam were stronger would be like saying everything would have been fine if the walkways were made of adamantium. That design would not have supported the load with a small change in materials: it would have required a radical rethink of the system.

As it was even with the original single-rod hangers the box beams were not designed with sufficient safety margin. They were designed to handle 100% of the design load, but the building codes at the time required a 60% safety margin. But by doubling the load with the design change, the box beam connector bracket was now being asked to support 200% of its maximum design load. That ultimately resulted in the collapse.

The *cause* of the collapse wasn't numbers, though, it was the fact that neither the structural engineers nor the construction fabricators felt responsible for the overall design, so no one bothered to question ad hoc changes to the design like this. This actually changed the industry in a way software implementation hasn't, which is why I mentioned it. It specifically caused the industry to declare that structural engineers have final ultimate responsibility for the entire as-built design of their projects, including change orders. They are explicitly taught not to rubber stamp design changes because they are singularly responsible for all of them. And its worth noting that even in the absence of that industry directive, the engineers responsible were punished by the industry (by having their licenses to practice engineering revoked).