Testing, discipline and detail

The manual process around updating broken links is due to be replaced by a simple link checker that I’ve been writing in Rust. It’s not quite ready yet but it’s nearly there…

I was updating a few broken links today and came across this from 2004;

“Software development is about discipline and detail; code quality starts to decay as soon as developers forget this. All code decays, but tests can help to make this decay obvious earlier. However, for tests to be any use at all they need to be run! This client could do all kinds of technical things to try and prevent this from happening again but deep down the problem is more of developer education than automation. The client needs to educate their junior developers so that they don’t actively seek to avoid the processes that they have in place around their development activities… Or, perhaps, they should just let the programmer responsible for the bug deal with the irate users; sending them to explain to the head of the desk why the numbers are wrong, again, usually has the desired effect of focussing the mind on the consequences of their actions…”

Which is still relevant. I face this problem less often now that I’m no longer working for clients which churn through junior developers, but it’s a useful reminder to me for when I’m the one cutting corners… Luckily for me I’m usually very scared of mucking things up and costing people money as I’ve done it in the past and it’s a painful experience…

Love the fact that the first publication of this post had a typo in the url…