23 May 2010 cdfrey   » (Journeyer)

Programmer Ethics

    apenwarr,

    That is a pretty comprehensive list. I'm probably in the same camp as you claim to be, having broken every one.

    The rules are pretty strong as well. I'm still mulling them over in my mind, but there is one that sticks out as unwise, or poorly written. It is #3, which says: "I will not write a program that fails to do tomorrow what it was able to do yesterday."

    Taken purely literally, this prevents all change, all experimentation, all feature-level refactoring. I'm sure this is not what the rule was intended to say. I'm assuming it is more of an encouragement for better testing, so that a bugfix in one area doesn't break a feature in another.

    Even taking this rule as a Testing Rule, I think it overreaches. There are steps that programmers can take to prevent regressions, but to assume that it is possible, or even common, to prevent them all is wishful thinking.

    I think a better rule would be something like: "I will not refuse or hinder the fixing of a bug that I have caused."

Syndicated 2010-05-23 18:27:14 from Chris Frey's Blog - Entries tagged advogato

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