Functional Testing is for End Users



  • How do most of you(us?) do regression testing? I've found a major regression in one the products we use that's open source and it is a pretty big regression for a .0.X release.

    Do you do a quick happy path of functionality, limit scope to just things that "should" be impacted or do a balls-to-the-wall regression check? Or just say, "It compiles, ship it!" ?

    I've 'submitted' a patch to said project but I'm really really dissatisfied that a fucking "minor" release busted core functionality.

    Okay using the CLI doesn't really count as core but when there's no documented API, the CLI is the next best thing right?

    Best part is it has been busted in the last 3 .0.X releases but no one has noticed until my group that uses said interface found it. Now I have to figure out if I re-write my app and "document" the "undocumented" API or just throw a hissy-fit that their shit is really-really-really busted; I'm leaning hissy-fit at the moment. Coupled with we have "paid support" so I'm all for ruining other developers long weekends.



  • Where's the poll? :angry:

    In any case, I vote FILE_NOT_FOUND.

    My second vote would be for "Hissy Fit".


  • Banned

    Once you are paying real money for something, your right to complain about broken-ness increases several orders of magnitude.



  • Another open source package that fails to do competent testing, eh?


  • BINNED

    @Arantor said:

    competent testing

    Unfortunately not only a problem for free beer software



  • @codinghorror said:

    Once you are paying real money for something, your right to complain about broken-ness increases several orders of magnitude.

    There's a subtle meta-commentary hidden in here I feel.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Once you are paying real money for something, your right to complain about broken-ness increases several orders of magnitude.

    No. No, no, no.

    If you're doing something for free, that's your decision. Maybe you want to make the world a better place. Maybe you're a devoted GNU zealot who believes in freedom of code. Maybe you just want to build up your street cred. But whatever the reason is, it doesn't give you the right to tell your end-users "it's free, so shut the fuck up".

    First of all, it's your decision to do something for free. Nobody's forcing you. And second, if you break your software like in the OP, you're actually costing people money. And trust me, I'd rather pay $100 or even $1000 for a non-broken piece of software, than lose $100,000 of income because I needed to shut my servers off for a week. So - even if you don't see this money - people who you fucked with breaking your software are still paying for it.

    Do you think we could excuse OpenSSL folks for Heartbleed? Do you think we don't have the right to complain? Do you think they should just say "well, if you paid us better, we wouldn't get programmers who are obviously writing code in the middle of a delirium, when the pink elephants are gone for a while"?

    And what if we extend the concept to other areas? What if a company offers you a remote controler for free, but when you point it at the TV, it blows it up? What if a friend offers to fix your plumbing for free, but floods your whole basement? What if we send free water to African children, but due to budget constraints, we ship it in used septic tanks? "Hey, we know it's full of shit, but it's free, so shut up"?

    So, if you have an open-source project, that's fine. Great, even. But you still need to care for its quality, because if you don't, you're actually making things worse for everybody than if you didn't start it in the first place.


    Filed under: not a discourse commentary, oddly



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    First of all, it's your decision to do something for free. Nobody's forcing you.

    This is a really weird argument. Nobody's forcing you to use the free software either. If you want accountability you pay someone to be accountable.

    You're looking beyond the depth that actually exists... no one needs to excuse OpenSSL for Heartbleed because there's no blame to place to begin with; the contract is "you get this for free, and if something goes wrong you can't hold us accountable". You don't use OpenSSL without that contract and OpenSSL wouldn't exist if they were held accountable for every possible vulnerability.

    "it's free, so shut the fuck up" shouldn't happen because the conversation shouldn't even go that far. You jumped out of the plane and let someone else pack your parachute. If you're not comfortable with their ability to pack a parachute, then you don't jump out of the plane. It's your responsibility to vet free software and weigh the risk before the jump.

    When you pay someone - a large part of why you're paying them is because you can hold them responsible when something goes wrong. You're establishing a contract and making an exchange for something that fits an agreed upon criteria. If that criteria isn't met on either side, then there's an imbalance that needs correction.

    So if you get burned by free software, you really have to hope that there's some shared interest in fixing things... because you're not owed anything. No exchange was made, there's no balance to be corrected.

    There's a reason open soured projects often revolve around the word community. The hope is that everyone treats each other like human beings and comes to some sort of solution or understanding... and if you can't live with the risk of that not happening you either have to learn how to fix it yourself or pay someone to be accountable.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    And what if we extend the concept to other areas? What if a company offers you a remote controler for free, but when you point it at the TV, it blows it up? What if a friend offers to fix your plumbing for free, but floods your whole basement? What if we send free water to African children, but due to budget constraints, we ship it in used septic tanks? "Hey, we know it's full of shit, but it's free, so shut up"?

    And yet every EULA I've seen makes a point of saying the company isn't responsible for incidental damage. If TurboTax does your return and files it like they're supposed to, but in the process deletes all the porn on your hard drive, that ain't Intuit's fault.



  • @awesomerobot said:

    Nobody's forcing you to use the free software either.

    Oh I wish I lived in a magical happy land where everybody uses reasonably priced proprietary solutions, software companies gladly offer technical support in exchange for a fee, and nobody is forced to turn to hackish open source software. But it's about as possible as that John Lennon song.

    @awesomerobot said:

    no one needs to excuse OpenSSL for Heartbleed because there's no blame to place to begin with

    What the fuck. So you're basically saying "you get it for free, so even if half the Internet runs on it, they can fuck up anytime they want, with malicious intent or not, if they're able to cover their tracks well enough"? Even for me, that's fucking Wild West.

    (also, quoting is broken. Huh.)

    @awesomerobot said:

    You jumped out of the plane and let someone else pack your parachute. If you're not comfortable with their ability to pack a parachute, then you don't jump out of the plane.

    Again - it doesn't mean whoever packed my parachute is not responsible for me making a me-shaped hole in the ground. And IANAL, but from what I know, there's still going to be a police investigation, at least to exclude the malicious intent, and is probably going to end up with a criminal negligence case.

    @awesomerobot said:

    So if you get burned by free software, you really have to hope that there's some shared interest in fixing things... because you're not owed anything. No exchange was made, there's no balance to be corrected.

    But we're not talking about some guy who downloads EasyTAG and it turns out it won't start. We're talking about the situation where there is balance to be corrected - namely, your shitty open source software costed me money. There is no difference between stealing someone's wallet, and burning it in a trash can.

    @awesomerobot said:

    The hope is that everyone treats each other like human beings and comes to some sort of solution or understanding...

    Yeah... that never happens.

    @da_Doctah said:

    And yet every EULA I've seen makes a point of saying the company isn't responsible for incidental damage. If TurboTax does your return and files it like they're supposed to, but in the process deletes all the porn on your hard drive, that ain't Intuit's fault.

    Is there a difference between TurboTax wiping your porn folder and TurboTax making you have a visit from two sad IRS gentlemen saying you owe them a kidney and a half? And is there a legal precedent for that?

    IANAL, again.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @da_Doctah said:

    And yet every EULA I've seen makes a point of saying the company isn't responsible for incidental damage. If TurboTax does your return and files it like they're supposed to, but in the process deletes all the porn on your hard drive, that ain't Intuit's fault.

    Just because the EULA says so doesn't make it so. In particular, EULAs are constrained by law; if someone pays for some software, they generally expect it to do what it was advertised to do, and this would be considered by courts to be a reasonable expectation. A grossly misleading piece of software would lead to a reasonable expectation of some recompense, though what that would be would depend on the circumstances; if someone's cat picture viewer ended up setting fire to the building by making the computer shoot lasers all over the place in total contravention of what it claimed would happen, no EULA (or wittering on about “undefined behaviour”) would save the developers' asses.

    OSS typically makes very minimal claims about what it does — it's a programming language, it's a web framework, it's a PBX control system — and generally the software at least makes a creditable attempt to do what it claims, so the amount that a court would judge to be reasonable recompense would be minimal. The real penalties only really kick in where vendors/authors are truly mendacious.



  • I think I'll put my chips with the "you get what you pay for" crowd.

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Oh I wish I lived in a magical happy land where everybody uses reasonably priced proprietary solutions, software companies gladly offer technical support in exchange for a fee, and nobody is forced to turn to hackish open source software. But it's about as possible as that John Lennon song.

    So your argument is, there is no paid, supported solution for my needs (or I / my company isn't willing to pay for it), so I'll just grab something that was made available for free and treat it as a paid, supported solution I wanted?

    Why should someone who just communicated their ideas be held equally liable as someone who sold you a product? Makes no sense.

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Again - it doesn't mean whoever packed my parachute is not responsible for me making a me-shaped hole in the ground. And IANAL, but from what I know, there's still going to be a police investigation, at least to exclude the malicious intent, and is probably going to end up with a criminal negligence case.

    If I was offering free parachutes, then yes.

    If in my personal journal I wrote an article "This is how I packed my own parachute", and you copied my instructions because you were too cheap to pay for the professional parachute packer or at least an official manual, and you knew there were no guarantees and you still jumped and went splat, and I genuinely thought I was publishing good information and didn't try to trick you on purpose, then sorry, it sucks, but I don't feel it's my fault.



  • @cartman82 said:

    So your argument is, there is no paid, supported solution for my needs (or I / my company isn't willing to pay for it), so I'll just grab something that was made available for free and treat it as a paid, supported solution I wanted?

    Why should someone who just communicated their ideas be held equally liable as someone who sold you a product? Makes no sense.

    So we should just treat all free software as crap that has no guarantee of working, and every time you run it you spin a Wheel of Fortune and pay it doesn't land on "Bankrupt"? Granted, I'd love to see that, but open source folks are somehow insistent on people using their software.

    @cartman82 said:

    If I was offering free parachutes, then yes.

    If in my personal journal I wrote an article "This is how I packed my own parachute", and you copied my instructions because you were too cheap to pay for the professional parachute packer or at least an official manual, and you knew there were no guarantees and you still jumped and went splat, and I genuinely thought I was publishing good information and didn't try to trick you on purpose, then sorry, it sucks, but I don't feel it's my fault.

    Yep, still your fault. If you had a culinary blog, and half your recipes contained arsenic, would you not at least feel morally responsible for people following your instructions? And the fact that you thought you were doing good is pointless, when you were, in fact, doing evil. That's what "criminal negligence" means.

    Yep, people shouldn't trust random guys on the internet publishing teh codez with no guarantee of working. But apparently they do. And those random guys never really outright say "look guys, it's a five-man project we do in our spare time, and our spare time involves hefty amount of booze - you really shouldn't be running half of the Web on it". It's all fine and dandy until things go to shit, and it's only then the "it's free" card is pulled out.


    Filed under: godwin in 3... 2... 1..., i'm mildly amused people still keep clicking my zomboized tags



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    i'm mildly amused people still keep clicking my zomboized tags

    I only do it when I'm trying to quote your tags and accidentally release the mouse button while still over the link. I was very careful not to do that this time.

    Perhaps the same thing is happening to other people?



  • @Keith said:

    Perhaps the same thing is happening to other people?



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    So we should just treat all free software as crap that has no guarantee of working, and every time you run it you spin a Wheel of Fortune and pay it doesn't land on "Bankrupt"? Granted, I'd love to see that, but open source folks are somehow insistent on people using their software.

    You treat it skeptically. Who are the people behind the project? Are there tests? How many people are using this thing? Just like any other information you come across.

    Let's say your buddy Chuck gives you an investment advice. Do you follow it?

    Depends. Did he advise you before? Did he advise others? How did it go? What's his professional background? How are his finances?

    You make your decision and you live with it. If things don't work out, you can even get angry at Chuck and maybe decry him to other friends. But you don't get to sue him, like there's some kind of warranty attached to a person's opinion.

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Yep, still your fault. If you had a culinary blog, and half your recipes contained arsenic, would you not at least feel morally responsible for people following your instructions? And the fact that you thought you were doing good is pointless, when you were, in fact, doing evil. That's what "criminal negligence" means.

    You are bringing in life or death stuff, which is regulated. There are limits to freedom of speech when it comes to people getting hurt. Even so, if you slap together untested open source libs into a controller for an industrial woodcutter and it cuts someone's head off, there's still only one person to blame.

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Yep, people shouldn't trust random guys on the internet publishing teh codez with no guarantee of working. But apparently they do. And those random guys never really outright say "look guys, it's a five-man project we do in our spare time, and our spare time involves hefty amount of booze - you really shouldn't be running half of the Web on it". It's all fine and dandy until things go to shit, and it's only then the "it's free" card is pulled out.

    Crappy practice - yes.
    Deserves criticism, like OpenSSL guys are receiving - yes.
    Deserves legal attention - no.



  • What is the broken application...It's open source right? What's it called and where do I find it?



  • @cartman82 said:

    You make your decision and you live with it. If things don't work out, you can even get angry at Chuck and maybe decry him to other friends. But you don't get to sue him, like there's some kind of warranty attached to a person's opinion.

    I did some research googled for a while and found this interesting precedent. Apparently (at least in England) if somebody's in the position of authority, they can be sued for damages in case their "opinion" causes harm.

    @cartman82 said:

    You are bringing in life or death stuff, which is regulated. There are limits to freedom of speech when it comes to people getting hurt. Even so, if you slap together untested open source libs into a controller for an industrial woodcutter and it cuts someone's head off, there's still only one person to blame.

    Yeah, the person who released a library and claimed it was suitable for use in industrial woodcutters. Because obviously, he was lying.

    @cartman82 said:

    Crappy practice - yes.Deserves criticism, like OpenSSL guys are receiving - yes.Deserves legal attention - no.

    And it should. Whether you get something for free or not, if they break your stuff, they should pay you back. That's a pretty basic foundation of law.

    Again - if a friend offers to fix your plumbing for free and floods your house, do you just let them go, or do you expect them to pay for the damages?



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    I did some research googled for a while and found this interesting precedent. Apparently (at least in England) if somebody's in the position of authority, they can be sued for damages in case their "opinion" causes harm.

    They also have crazy defamation laws. Not my role model country.

    And it should. Whether you get something for free or not, if they break your stuff, they should pay you back. That's a pretty basic foundation of law.

    Again - if a friend offers to fix your plumbing for free and floods your house, do you just let them go, or do you expect them to pay for the damages?

    They should pay.

    If, on the other hand, they tell you how they fixed their own plumbing and you try to follow along and mess up, it's your own fault.



  • BTW, legal counter example.

    Woman who did this not only wasn't held liable, but felt confident enough to demand royalties after her fuckup went viral.

    Infuriating, no argument from me. But you get what you pay for. And they chose to go with someone whom they could pay nothing.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    I did some research googled for a while and found this interesting precedent. Apparently (at least in England) if somebody's in the position of authority, they can be sued for damages in case their "opinion" causes harm.

    It's a little more complicated than that. Basically, if you take an action or make a statement upon which others reasonably rely and that results in harm to them, they may sue you. Which isn't to say that they'll win, of course.

    But it does depend on the exact statements made. If you were publishing a programming language, someone else (e.g., J. Schmoe Developer) used that code to write a railway signalling system, and then a train crashed because of a bug, it would be difficult for the survivors of the crash to sue you (unless you explicitly stated that the programming language was intended for use in signalling systems I suppose). All you warranted was that it was a programming language that could be used for all sorts of things, and it was indeed that, and nor did you have special knowledge that people would get into trouble from using it. It's the last point that really matters.

    Stating that the software create doesn't carry any kind of warranty of fitness (other than the basic one implied by its very nature) is pretty common, and acts as a reasonable defence in this sort of situation: it's J. Schmoe Developer who made the statement of fitness of purpose, and so they carry the liability associated with that statement. It's not an absolute defence, but it's a huge barrier required for the plaintiff to establish that you should have liability for something that far removed.

    On the other hand, if you make a programming language available while deliberately embedding code inside it to make it also make the computer join a botnet and run bitcoin mining without disclosing these things to the people — the programmers — using the language, then you'd better bet some liability will be coming your way. It's about the nature of knowledge and intent, as with so much in the law; laws aren't computer programs, and it's a fundamental mistake to think that the same sorts of edge-case analysis are useful.



  • @cartman82 said:

    They should pay.

    If, on the other hand, they tell you how they fixed their own plumbing and you try to follow along and mess up, it's your own fault.

    What's the real difference between the two? Assuming you don't merely "try to follow along", but follow the instruction to the letter, these two are pretty much the same to me. In both cases, you put trust in someone's expertise, and it costs you money. The fact who put his hands on the plumbing is, I think, irrelevant.

    @dkf said:

    If you were publishing a programming language, someone else (e.g., J. Schmoe Developer) used that code to write a railway signalling system, and then a train crashed because of a bug, it would be difficult for the survivors of the crash to sue you (unless you explicitly stated that the programming language was intended for use in signalling systems I suppose)

    Most software pretty much explicitly states the reason for which it was written. A programming language is a bad analogy, since there's a grey area as to how much to blame the tools, and how much to blame the bad workman.

    But let's say you have an encryption library, and that it fails to encrypt. Can you dodge the liability by saying it shouldn't be used for encryption? You end up with the headphones silliness, only even worse, because you undermine the very nature of the product.

    @dkf said:

    On the other hand, if you make a programming language available while deliberately embedding code inside it to make it also make the computer join a botnet and run bitcoin mining without disclosing these things to the people — the programmers — using the language, then you'd better bet some liability will be coming your way. It's about the nature of knowledge and intent, as with so much in the law;

    Good point - except I'm not sure "shit man, I didn't know" is valid defense. The end result is the same, with or without malicious intent - and in most cases, it might serve as an attenuating circumstance, but won't just get you off the hook.

    @cartman82 said:

    you get what you pay for.

    Nooo, you get what you're told you'll get. Otherwise it's just scamming.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    What's the real difference between the two? Assuming you don't merely "try to follow along", but follow the instruction to the letter, these two are pretty much the same to me. In both cases, you put trust in someone's expertise, and it costs you money. The fact who put his hands on the plumbing is, I think, irrelevant.

    How can it be irrelevant "who put hands of the plumbing"? IMO that's the central issue.

    In the first case, your buddy took over the responsibility for fixing your plumbing. By failing at this task, he failed in this responsibility and is liable for some of the damages.

    In the second case, all he did was communicate with you. In no way did he force you to use his information in any way. You could have forgotten all about it. Or you could have read a textbook and found a better technique. Or you could have hired a professional plumber. Instead, you choose to do it yourself. And by doing that, you took over the responsibility for consequences.

    Blaming person A's opinions for person B's actions is tempting at times, but ultimately leads to madness.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    except I'm not sure "shit man, I didn't know" is valid defense

    It depends on whether you either knew or should have known, given your purported expertise in the area and what you claimed at the time.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @cartman82 said:

    Blaming person A's opinions for person B's actions is tempting at times, but ultimately leads to madness.

    Courts deal with that sort of thing all the time. “Incitement” is an example.



  • @dkf said:

    Courts deal with that sort of thing all the time. “Incitement” is an example.

    And I find this sort of busybody nanny-state crap to be a complete bullshit. You have an example where you think that sort of inquiry was justified?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @cartman82 said:

    And I find this sort of busybody nanny-state crap to be a complete bullshit.

    You're entitled to have that opinion if you want, but you'll find that saying things to cause someone else to do something bad is very much something that the law in the place you live has something to say about. And in a great many other places too; it's one of the things that (almost) everyone agrees has to be regulated somewhat for society to be civilised.



  • @dkf said:

    You're entitled to have that opinion if you want, but you'll find that saying things to cause someone else to do something bad is very much something that the law in the place you live has something to say about. And in a great many other places too; it's one of the things that (almost) everyone agrees has to be regulated somewhat for society to be civilised.

    Fair enough.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    What the fuck. So you're basically saying "you get it for free, so even if half the Internet runs on it, they can fuck up anytime they want, with malicious intent or not, if they're able to cover their tracks well enough"? Even for me, that's fucking Wild West.

    It is the wild west. No one's going to give away software if they're accountable for whenever outages cost you money. You just have to hope that the free software you're getting is maintained by reasonable people who will care if it costs you money (or you can pay someone who can fix it).

    If you chose to use open-source software and it costs you money that's a predicament you created. You could have created software or paid someone to be accountable, but you didn't. Sure, not everyone is capable of those options - but that doesn't mean it's on open-sourced projects to wipe your ass for you because you can't do it yourself.

    Who's seeing jail time or fines for creating the situation that caused heartbleed? no one. That's the way it needs to be with open-source or it will completely cease to exist. There was no mal intent, the license says there's no responsibility on the contributors, and anyone using the software could check the source themselves.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Do you think we could excuse OpenSSL folks for Heartbleed? Do you think we don't have the right to complain? Do you think they should just say "well, if you paid us better, we wouldn't get programmers who are obviously writing code in the middle of a delirium, when the pink elephants are gone for a while"?

    Isn't this pretty much exactly what they DID say? Didn't they basically say "look at all these massive companies who use our software that havent paid a dime to support it... sure would be nice, and maybe more secure, if they helped out!"



  • @dkf said:

    @Maciejasjmj said:
    except I'm not sure "shit man, I didn't know" is valid defense

    It depends on whether you either knew or should have known, given your purported expertise in the area and what you claimed at the time.


    Depressingly, it does seem to work.



  • @cartman82 said:

    Blaming person A's opinions for person B's actions is tempting at times, but ultimately leads to madness.

    But so does not doing this. "Well, Mr CIA Officer, I've only been voicing my opinion that the president should be shot to that man, and I've also opinionated that whoever does that might possibly be rewarded with a million dollar reward!"

    @dkf said:

    It depends on whether you either knew or should have known, given your purported expertise in the area and what you claimed at the time.

    Exactly. And no developer is going to admit that he has no idea what he's doing when trying to sell (or give) you a product.

    @awesomerobot said:

    Who's seeing jail time or fines for creating the situation that caused heartbleed? no one. That's the way it needs to be with open-source or it will completely cease to exist.

    So, to exist, open source projects need to have their developers excluded from any responsibility whatsoever for their action, and let them do whatever the fuck they want, even if it costs their users gajilions of dollars?

    Wow. Maybe they should cease to exist.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    But so does not doing this. "Well, Mr CIA Officer, I've only been voicing my opinion that the president should be shot to that man, and I've also opinionated that whoever does that might possibly be rewarded with a million dollar reward!"

    I was thinking more about information exchange. Sort of subtlety between "speaking" and "speech". Of course you're allowed to move your finger, unless it happens to be inside a trigger.

    So, to exist, open source projects need to have their developers excluded from any responsibility whatsoever for their action, and let them do whatever the fuck they want, even if it costs their users gajilions of dollars?

    Wow. Maybe they should cease to exist.

    A lot of open source shops survive on providing paid support/someone to yell at/sue for their free stuff. Feels like the best of both worlds.


  • Considered Harmful

    @cartman82 said:

    A lot of open source shops survive on providing paid support/someone to yell at/sue for their free stuff. Feels like the best of both worlds.

    Yes: you get the same level of quality you'd have gotten for free, with the reassurance that if something goes horribly wrong you can sue them for more than they're worth (whereupon they will simply file for bankruptcy).



  • @error said:

    Yes: you get the same level of quality you'd have gotten for free, with the reassurance that if something goes horribly wrong you can sue them for more than they're worth (whereupon they will simply file for bankruptcy).

    But you will have the moral victory in the end.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Regression testing is where automated testing methods really shine. I don't have as much of it as I would like, but I have it.



  • @MathNerdCNU said:

    How do most of you(us?) do regression testing?

    In all honesty, we have not found any need to do this regression testing, or integration testing or any kind of testing. The amount of paperwork we have to go through for integration testing is so huge, that w are unable to get it in time. meanwhile client is screaming at the project manager who is screaming at the project ladder who's screaming at me. So I just tell our guys ot push out the stuff ASAP. then I am putting various disclaimer in email and sending that to the project ladder and project manager. Then we get client screaming back asking why the whole stuff was not tested before shipping. IN that time, I am out of this activity, because of disclaimer in email. Then the project manager does some lying and all is well till the next change request.

    the only testing we do egregiously is unit testing


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Nagesh said:

    egregiously is unit testing

    I like the concept of egregious unit testing, and probably some of the previous outsourced unit tests fit this.



  • @boomzilla said:

    I like the concept of egregious unit testing, and probably some of the previous outsourced unit tests fit this.

    i mean to use word religously, but I misspelled it and Firefox fixed it for me.



  • @Nagesh said:

    i mean to use word religously, but I misspelled it and Firefox fixed it for me.

    This is why you should go back to IE6, @Nagesh.



  • @Keith said:

    This is why you should go back to IE6, @Nagesh.

    That is why I like IE11. best browsre. I also have IE8 in another machine. This FF30 was not presetn and suddenly I finding it on the VM. This is much joy like that cute girl in college who smile at you on her first day.



  • @Nagesh said:

    This is much joy like that cute girl in college who smile at you on her first day.

    It was more of a disgusted grimace, but I take what I can get.



  • @Keith said:

    It was more of a disgusted grimace, but I take what I can get.

    My story is different then yours. Also in western world, people smile at each other for no reason. In East, you only smile at a person who knows you. If you smile at stranger people, then you are one of those idiots who need to get their head-examined or you are attracted to that person in more way than one.



  • @cartman82 said:

    Infuriating, no argument from me. But you get what you pay for. And they chose to go with someone whom they could pay nothing.

    They didn't pick her. She just did it, with no prior approval.

    @cartman82 said:

    Woman who did this not only wasn't held liable

    IIRC, that's because the church in question chose not to press charges.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    Regression testing is where automated testing methods really shine. I don't have as much of it as I would like, but I have it.

    I've seen a lot of talk of Test-Driven Development, but I've found that Test-Supported Maintenance is a great thing. (Now, if only more more academic funders would understand that merely producing the first version of a thing isn't enough… but that's a rant for another time.)



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    So, to exist, open source projects need to have their developers excluded from any responsibility whatsoever for their action, and let them do whatever the fuck they want, even if it costs their users gajilions of dollars?

    Outside of ill intent? yes. Why would you do something for free if an unforeseen circumstance could ruin you?

    It's the same reason Good Samaritan laws exist in some places — if there's a chance someone could sue me into non-existence because I was trying to do something to benefit others, why would I ever risk doing something to benefit others?



  • The good question is, what would you do something for free in the first place, but that's too much of a philosophical debacle.

    Good Samaritan is a bit of a different matter, in that it's a situation where you have to act quick, and usually there's no one else to do it better around. And still, if there is, you should hand the duty to them.

    It's more like having a volunteer organization with no proper training, which also takes the place of professional paramedics. And that's bad.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said:

    Test-Supported Maintenance is a great thing

    Yep. I like to write a new test for each bug I fix (of course, I'm lazy and blech, so my record isn't perfect). And I find that tests catch at least one or two regressions during each development cycle.



  • People that get into open source do it because they believe in it, in the product in question and want to develop it - and because they feel as though they're part of something bigger, that fundamental 'need to belong'. Unfortunately most of the people that get into open source really aren't quite up to the task.

    But you then get into a nasty circle where you don't want to turn away the incompetent ones (even if you recognise them as such!) because then you'll self-perceive as hostile, which means not attracting the actually competent ones.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Arantor said:

    But you then get into a nasty circle where you don't want to turn away the incompetent ones (even if you recognise them as such!) because then you'll self-perceive as hostile, which means not attracting the actually competent ones.

    That's why people start off by writing patches (or documentation, or tests, or demos, or all of the other possible things in the ulterior) and have those extensively reviewed. Once they're good at writing the sort of patch that gets accepted and have taken on the true ethos of the project, they can be promoted to having direct commit access (and being one of the people who review others' patches).


Log in to reply