From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-06-08T12:01:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Unit tests ... not just for the young

On Monday 07 June 2004 16:13, Kloubakov, Yura wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Sean O'Dell [mailto:sean@celsoft.com]
> > Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 12:35
> >
> > It's hard to describe my technique.  I just have a lot of
> > little habits that add up to a lot of smooth sailing.
>
> [snip]
>
> Are you working alone on all your projects and no one ever has
> to modify or re-factor your code?  If no, do they have the
> same defect rate as you are when working with your code?  What
> about yourself when you have to work on your code a year later?

Nowadays, I work alone mostly.  When I work with others, we all have the same 
type of habits, more of less.  I haven't worked with a programmer younger 
than 30+ in a long time, though.  I have about the same defect rate as the 
older programmers I've worked with.  I've worked with some fresh guys right 
out of college that had what I would a disastrous defect rate.  In fact, I 
don't recall a college-educated programmer at any place I've worked that 
DIDN'T get fired for being highly unproductive...perhaps one, maybe two.  I 
return to ancient code all the time and it's fine.  In fact, about a year 
ago, I ported a good-sized C++ application (non-GUI) that was written for 
VC++/MFC about 9 years ago to Linux and it took me a couple days to get 
ported.  I even got a pretty well-rounded C++ class library out of the port 
that is almost completely portable between Linux and Windows; strings, 
arrays, avl trees, file I/O, sockets, threads, mutexes...all sorts of stuff, 
all portable.

	Sean O'Dell