Filed under: Testing

Ready Made v Ground Up

Now this is a debate ragging in my head for quite some time now. I just completed a project for my college's website. The website was built using Drupal. We are now looking for a fully functional website for the college alumni. And there again, we are looking at Ning as a platform. Drupal wass used by a group of students to build a website. They did not have the time to build the whole thing from scratch. Why? Because they were busy with their projects and assignments. When it came to working professionals building a similar website, time became even more of a luxury than before and we moved towards a more ready made platform. And in all this i am not even talking about the time spent in developing the product. But like all software pros, i am talking about the time spent in testing it, making it bullet proof and then maintaining it. Now, this entails a lot of time. When you come to think of it, if and when someone starts paying you for something like this, it becomes a full time job. But then again, that is a big "if".

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You cannot please everyone

I was taught this lesson in my 1st year of engineering when i was working on my college magazine, Srijna. It was a simple idea and thought. Beyond anything else, it was a warning. The fact that you cannot please everyone is well ingrained in my head. I understand it better than most people. "Why?", you ask. Simply because, i fail at it over and over and over again. I find the whole notion challenging. Over the years i have witnessed it in many projects and activities in which i have been involved in. The world of professional software development is no different. I am not talking about my work at office. I am talking about Project Doughnut, the founding website team of my undergrad college. Today, after its soft launch nearly 2 and half weeks ago, the website was thrown into the deep waters of an online public forum. This was the kind of publicity we (the team and i) were and were not looking for. But then again, there was the feedback, which we took with intent ears and minds. Paid good attention to most of what people had to say. And that is where i realised that i had yet again set out on a road to keep every one happy, this is otherwise called User Acceptance Testing in the world of software development.

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Code Integration

It has been a week of thorough introspection and rough hours at work. With ever changing requirements and demands of the software world and its clients, i guess any developer goes through this phase early in his career. The phase where he not only has to produce good code but also keep changing it as per those requirements, and fast!! And all the while, you have to produce bug free code. So what is the secret? How do you keep writing good error free code, with the fast paced changes? Well, let me break the bad news to you: No one can write bug free code in its entirety with significant changes in the software model/requirements being made every other day. But here is the good news: You can reduce the number of bugs by being careful about the changes that you incorporate in your software/code. And this whole process of being careful is called Integration testing.

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