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> if we want to call ourselves engineers we need to hold ourselves to engineering standards. Bridge builders do not get to skip tests. Bravo. We need more of t

> if we want to call ourselves engineers we need to hold ourselves to engineering standards. Bridge builders do not get to skip tests. Bravo. We need more of this mindset in the world, and also more collective will to encourage it in one another. YOU are the kind of engineer I want writing the code that goes in my Dad's pacemaker or the cruise control in my wife's car.

m3kw9 3y ago
If you have worked in places where safety is critical, you wouldn’t say something so shallow. In those places they place human verification above all else. They have a thick book where you do a full run and is double checked, they don’t f around with unit tests and say this is good to go
- ska 3y ago
  I don't think anyone is saying unit tests and you are good to go are they? In any critical system work, there are multiple layers and you can't really skip any of them. It's also sort of meaningless to talk about such testing without requirements and spec to test against. Traceability is as much a part of it as any of the testing. By the time you get to the "thick book/full run" as you put it, there has typically been a metric crapload of testing done already.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  Human verification is very expensive, compared to unit tests. It costs money to pay that human to do it, time for them to test it, time to describe issues found, time to send it back for a fix. Unit tests - actually, all automated tests - are comparatively cheap. The developer can run them immediately. All code will have bugs. The "trick" to building a productive development pipeline is to catch as many of those bugs as possible as early as possible, and thereby reduce both the temporal and monetary cost of resolving them.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  For all the testing and paperwork, the code in safety critical applications is still frequently awful and riddled with bugs, following such a process does not actually guarantee good software, it mostly just means you need a lot of paper pushers.

m3kw9 3y ago

If you have worked in places where safety is critical, you wouldn’t say something so shallow. In those places they place human verification above all else. They have a thick book where you do a full run and is double checked, they don’t f around with unit tests and say this is good to go

ska 3y ago
I don't think anyone is saying unit tests and you are good to go are they? In any critical system work, there are multiple layers and you can't really skip any of them. It's also sort of meaningless to talk about such testing without requirements and spec to test against. Traceability is as much a part of it as any of the testing. By the time you get to the "thick book/full run" as you put it, there has typically been a metric crapload of testing done already.
Ancapistani 3y ago
Human verification is very expensive, compared to unit tests. It costs money to pay that human to do it, time for them to test it, time to describe issues found, time to send it back for a fix. Unit tests - actually, all automated tests - are comparatively cheap. The developer can run them immediately. All code will have bugs. The "trick" to building a productive development pipeline is to catch as many of those bugs as possible as early as possible, and thereby reduce both the temporal and monetary cost of resolving them.
rcxdude 3y ago
For all the testing and paperwork, the code in safety critical applications is still frequently awful and riddled with bugs, following such a process does not actually guarantee good software, it mostly just means you need a lot of paper pushers.