{"id":1000302,"date":"2006-12-02T09:56:36","date_gmt":"2006-12-02T14:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/software-development\/2006\/12\/02\/right-wingers-dont-understand-software\/"},"modified":"2006-12-02T09:57:41","modified_gmt":"2006-12-02T14:57:41","slug":"right-wingers-dont-understand-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/software-development\/2006\/12\/02\/right-wingers-dont-understand-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Right-wingers Don’t Understand Software"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, at least one right-winger doesn’t. Here’s a howler from Taylor Dinerman at Pajamas Media<\/a> explaining why we shouldn’t bother to test weapons systems before buying and deploying them:<\/p>\n

Certainly testing sounds reasonable. Why not make sure the stuff works before blowing billions on it? But the testing fixation ignores that, like software, most successful weapons systems are best debugged after being deployed<\/strong>. And some weapons systems were never tested at all before deployment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

Nobody, but nobody, in the software world believes you should test or debug after deployment. Testing as early as possible is the mantra of modern software development. Test first programming is the most significant improvement in software development in decades. <\/p>\n

Debugging after deployment is a clear indication of failure in the software development process. It happens, but smart programmers do everything they can to make sure they have to do as little of this as possible. <\/p>\n

Even in the classic waterfall model, testing and debugging happens before deployment. That didn’t work very well so we’ve now moved testing even earlier in the software development life cycle, and it works much better.<\/p>\n

Is he seriously suggesting a “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to weapons development? At least software doesn’t kill people when it’s buggy. (Well, at least not most of the time.) A defective weapons system needs more and earlier testing than software, not later and less. <\/p>\n

I’ve already commented on his blog, but perhaps some of the right-wing developers out there would also care to set this lunatic straight. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, at least one right-winger doesn’t. Here’s a howler from Taylor Dinerman at Pajamas Media explaining why we shouldn’t bother to test weapons systems before buying and deploying them: Certainly testing sounds reasonable. Why not make sure the stuff works before blowing billions on it? But the testing fixation ignores that, like software, most successful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[410],"class_list":["post-1000302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software-development","tag-flash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}