In “This Developer’s Life” podcast “1.0.3 Problems” mentioned on Scott Hanselman’s blog
Regarding the “1.0.3 Problems” comments about how bad it would be to have written “the bug” that trashed a Mars rover: I don’t think we have to speculate too much about hypothetical situations. We have the Hubble telescope mirror, for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Flawed_mirror
and the Mars orbiter thing too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Encounter_with_Mars
“Bummer, dude” is one possible response.
But it would be QA’s fault! I wish I could say I am kidding. It’s just that years of testing software has taught me that bugs released into production environments are the fault of QA, not development, so I don’t think any Mars developers would have to worry.
I have to respectfully disagree:
I am a developer. I hold developers fully responsible for producing bug-free code. When I release bugs into production, it’s ***MY*** fault.
There is no way that any external “QA” department can test the software I write as well as I can. And all of my many, many years of experience do nothing but convince me all the stronger that this is true.
Learn Test-Driven Development (TDD), and you’ll know what true developer testing is all about.