Posts made in April, 2012

Software Crisis, Software Quality and Douglas Crockford

Posted by Javier Salado on Apr 27, 2012 in From the editor, Software quality | 0 comments

It is amazing how things change and evolve despite we commit the same mistakes again and again. I don’t know how, but things move forward.

Look at software for example, during the last 40 years we have seen it become a fundamental part of our life making us more productive, more effective and even happier. However, software developers and developer managers still suffer the so called Software Crisis, a term defined in the late 60′s to describe how software projects were over budget, over time, unreliable, unmaintainable and didn’t meet the requirements. How is this possible? How can software allow radical changes in the way we do stuff and interact with the world and our fellow earthlings, and at the same time the fundamental activity of its development has so many flaws?

Software excellence? Follow the paved roads

Posted by Javier Salado on Apr 25, 2012 in From the editor, Software quality | 1 comment

The other day I was driving my car to work and I couldn’t help thinking about how vulnerable we are. The road conditions, the weather, the other drivers, my full attention and focus on driving and of course the good shape of my car are factors that, if not under control, draw the thin line that separates life from death. A simple failure in one of the components of the car and the accident could be inevitable. I kept chaining thoughts on how important it is to trust the quality of the products we use in a daily basis.

Every thing you always wanted to know about Optimyth but were afraid to ask

Posted by Javier Salado on Apr 18, 2012 in From the editor, Optimyth Software | 0 comments

These past months we have been blathering about software quality, software metrics, technical debt, the economic benefits of measuring your software, the importance of maintainability as a driver to a more cost effective development process, how established quality models help you understand what you are dealing with and how application component inventory sheds light into the unknown complexity of your software.

Today I want to share a video with you that summarizes all these and give you an idea of what we do here at Optimyth Software. I hope you like the metaphor of the video. Please tell us what you think and don’t hesitate to contact us for any you need. We can help you manage and control your software quality and rationalize your application portfolio. Enjoy it!

Aren’t you doing code reviews yet?

Posted by Javier Salado on Apr 4, 2012 in From the editor, Static code analysis | 0 comments

It was 1996 when I had my first code review. I was a developer at Hewlett-Packard’s European headquarters in Böblingen. My team developed internal applications for other departments inside HP. In those days C and C++ were the languages of choice, and we were starting to fool around with a new thing named Java and designing new web interfaces to legacy applications we maintained using ancient HTML, CGI programs generating it written in C and LiveScript the primitive form of javascript from Netscape. Those where the days…