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As a software engineer who cares deeply about testing, I sometimes find myself wishing that there was a way to run a binding moot court on a law before it got r
by afarrell 7y ago
As a software engineer who cares deeply about testing, I sometimes find myself wishing that there was a way to run a binding moot court on a law before it got ratified.
- tantalor 7y agoIf it is binding then it not really moot is it?
- afarrell 7y agoSure. but "binding moot court" was the most concise way I could think of to say "A legal proceeding where you assume a certain set of facts are known, then argue how the law would apply to them, then a judgement is made which becomes binding precedent on how the law is interpreted unless the law is changed by the legislature to produce more clarity."
- jfengel 7y agoAs a software engineer, I laugh bitterly every time a lawyer tells me that they are being rigorous in their interpretation of a law. Even when all the lawyers agree on interpretation, their notion of "rigor" bears no resemblance to the way a computer applies the term. A test engineer would have zero problem fuzz-testing a law into nonexistence.
- gamblor956 7y agoTo be fair, that's how most people feel when programmers tell people that they rigorously test their software. What programmers consider rigorous testing is literally just automated, predetermined situations that often have little resemblance to the ways end users actually use (and break) the software.
- watwut 7y agoYou should have seen developers rigorously implement requirements. Just saying.
- jfengel 7y agoThe way I see it, that's what a developer is: a tool for translating fuzzy requirements into rigid definitions. Sometimes they're just plain lazy about that task, but even when it's done well, they discover vagueness and incompleteness in the specifications. They use their judgment to fill that in, but they're often wrong, especially when they don't really know the domain. Programmers want rigid requirements, because that makes their job easier. Indeed, it does their real job for them. If we had a really rigid way of writing specs, you'd just write a compiler for it. The real job of a programmer is precisely about playing intermediary between the true rigor of the computer and the pseudo-rigor of requirements.
- watwut 7y agoI was hinting toward frustrating programmers, testers and manager, who don't bother reading requirements (or think they know better) and proceed to code and test against own imagination. Despite requirements being unambiguous about this or that point.
- jfengel 7y agoOh, definitely agreed. We programmers do rather suck at our profession, especially as I define our profession. Not all of us, and not all the time, but we get rather feted for our technical sk1llz while failing to deliver the thing we're actually supposed to be doing -- even just outright ignoring it.