A while back Sean Tierney’s posted to Agile or Fragile. I was listening to the audio clip and I was almost shocked hearing whether software had malpractice cases. Think about it…cough cough Microsoft Windows… just imagine how many times you have to reboot or fix something, software just has bugs and we live with it, right? Well imagine if you had to worry about software malpractice and focus on writing 100% perfect code. Some developers have to write 100% perfect code, just think of the banking world, why do you think so much of their infrastructure has gone unchanged.

Coding and building things that have no errors or bugs is hard. Spending all that time testing and then asking yourself “is it worth it”, are people using it or was that weeks, month, year of coding not worth it. I just find it interesting listening to people who compare apples to oranges like cars to software. I know this “concept” of software malpractice is much like that, but I wanted to throw it out there and get coders to think before they code as well as USERS to understand bugs happen. I know with Google and every web 2.0 launching in “beta” has helped the users as well as the developers to find bugs and fix them. For me, I know I like to do multiple soft launches and/or build up this “nut” that does something and build upon it. Being agile you want to build simple sexy code that is tested as well as completed in a short period of time. I know for most a day, week, or even 2 weeks is a good time to put on various “features” for agile development. You do not want to build code that you will have to “fix” later.

So what do you think about coding malpractice? Do you think companies should be liable for the code they release? Or should users understand that bugs are too common in development and they need to “deal” with them.

Tags: Software Malpractice