Software Bugs

Rainer Mauth

The truth hurts. "Many software development organizations pay lip service to quality--shipping untested software when deadline pressures dictate." That's the not-so-surprising conclusion of a study, published by CenterLine Software (Cambridge, MA), that surveyed more than 300 software organizations in Europe.

What's more astonishing is that 57 percent of the developers admitted that their organizations had knowingly shipped software with bugs, and a staggering 76 percent of developers believe use rs are "programmed" to accept software flaws, expecting they'll be addressed in a later release.

Asked about what kind of development environments produced the most bugs, 52 percent of respondents said multiplatform development. Other bug-producing culprits include rapid application development (RAD) and shared development. However, 74 percent of developers are significantly more concerned about software quality than they were five years ago, according to the survey.

We're not sure if this is good news or bad news.