neufuse Veteran Posted April 26, 2018 Veteran Share Posted April 26, 2018 After having a heated discussion... What do you guys think about the idea of hardware / software should not be released until it's 100% bug free? Here's my problems with this statement: How would you ever know? Things like CPU design are so complex it's near impossible to know Problems like the Specter / meltdown, how do you even check for that if the CPU was designed to work that way? Sure there are things you SHOULD be checking for before a release Product stability Buffer overflows bad arithmetic known issues / flaws etc My opinion is that is is impossible to have something 100% bug / flaw free because you will never think of 100% of the scenario that could cause a flaw / bug and new tech in the future might make something that was not an issue become one. Which means never releasing a product in theory. What do you guys think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick H. Supervisor Posted April 26, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted April 26, 2018 I agree with you. You can't make something 100% bug-free, nothing would ever get released. However, that doesn't give you an excuse for doing a half-arsed job at QA. dipsylalapo, DConnell and StrikedOut 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dipsylalapo Supervisor Posted April 26, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted April 26, 2018 Yep yep, 100% with you both. I don't think there's anything that can be 100% bug free and even if the vendor thinks something is 100% bug free as you said there's a good chance something in the future will break it! DConnell and StrikedOut 2 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrikedOut Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 Agree with all of the above. How do you test for the near unlimited variation of hardware specifications of company build devices, let alone custom built devices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astra.Xtreme Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 There are a couple of angles here. A bug could be unwanted behavior such as an overflow or a bit triggering an unexpected result. Those are preventable, but it's super difficult to test every possible combination. In my experience as an embedded developer, end-users find dumb ways to make things go wrong. I can write my code to do what I want it to do and then run the tests for how it's designed to be operated, but somebody will always discover a new angle that wasn't thought of. It happens every time. A bug could also be a loophole or hack vulnerability. Obviously we know that nothing is unhackable, so shooting for 100% bug free is kind of a paradox. tsupersonic 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dipsylalapo Supervisor Posted April 26, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted April 26, 2018 18 minutes ago, StrikedOut said: Agree with all of the above. How do you test for the near unlimited variation of hardware specifications of company build devices, let alone custom built devices. Even with limited hardware specs (a la Apple) it's seems like it's impossible to be bug free as we've seen. StrikedOut 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DKAngel Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 cant, as nothing would get released, just do ya best test it out and away ya go there will always be flaws Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shockz Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 (edited) It's never possible to have a bug free product. However, I feel that relying on the general public to vet and test your product in lieu of a full QA team with buzz words like insiders, agile and on the fly development is not a proper way to do things. The trend of relying on consumers to report bugs and fix after is something that would of been unheard of even a decade ago, and would be more-so of an embarrassment to the product. While you can't catch everything, there have been plenty of high profile bugs that should of never made it to a general release had a longer release cycle to properly test and debug taken place. Having bugs isn't the issue, but the way about discovering them leaves a lot to be desired lately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techbeck Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 Bug free is a myth and a pipe dream. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tsupersonic Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 This is impossible, and the first three posts are ignorant of the development life cycle/process. As long as it's human made, it will always have bugs...Part of the development lifecycle is to release fixes, as humans are creative in finding bugs (whether good or bad) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dipsylalapo Supervisor Posted April 26, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted April 26, 2018 4 minutes ago, tsupersonic said: This is impossible, and the first three posts are ignorant of the development life cycle/process. As long as it's human made, it will always have bugs...Part of the development lifecycle is to release fixes, as humans are creative in finding bugs (whether good or bad) The first three posts agree with what you said Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nekrosoft13 Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 Sure! sounds great, lets never again release any software and hardware ever again! since in reality, no software/hardware will ever be 100% bug free. EVER. DConnell 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nekrosoft13 Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 1 hour ago, shockz said: It's never possible to have a bug free product. However, I feel that relying on the general public to vet and test your product in lieu of a full QA team with buzz words like insiders, agile and on the fly development is not a proper way to do things. The trend of relying on consumers to report bugs and fix after is something that would of been unheard of even a decade ago, and would be more-so of an embarrassment to the product. While you can't catch everything, there have been plenty of high profile bugs that should of never made it to a general release had a longer release cycle to properly test and debug taken place. Having bugs isn't the issue, but the way about discovering them leaves a lot to be desired lately. true.... but its impossible for any PC company to have every possible hardware combination to do a proper test/debug. For Apple it should more of a reality, because of their closed garden ecosystem, for them it should be feasible to have most if not all possible hardware combinations, and even they release beta code to help with bug finding. Microsoft on the other hand will never be able to test every possible hardware combination due to the open ecosystem. DConnell 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted April 26, 2018 Moderator Share Posted April 26, 2018 Like Windows? LOL... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neufuse Veteran Posted April 26, 2018 Author Veteran Share Posted April 26, 2018 yeah, this whole discussion started when the company head said we wont release a product until its 100% bug free....... which lead to me saying "that's impossible" which lead to them saying "then you aren't trying enough"..... which lead to a hour long war of words on why it's ridiculous to expect that vs why they want it...... so basically company owner vs software engineers DConnell 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul1979UK Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 (edited) It would be great if we could release hardware and software bug free but at our level of tech, it's more or less impossible to do, but maybe someday in the future it will be doable, more so with A.I. helping to develop and test hardware and software, but we are quite away from that. Best we can do for now is get hardware and software in a decent stable postion whereas even if there is bugs, it's not game braking in most cases, something big publishers of games could learn from with releasing games in too buggy state. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted April 26, 2018 MVC Share Posted April 26, 2018 I always think back to the day of Windows 95 and while sure it had it's share of bugs and bluescreens, think about what they shipped. They shipped an OS on a disk / disc before getting patches on the internet was standard (ship it now, patch it later). It had to be compatible with a large assortment of configurations out of the box. It still amazes me what they were able to accomplish. Maybe I just had a good experience installing it on our Gateway P5 60. Same goes for games on game consoles before the era of downloadable game patches (day one patches). They had to get it right the first time. While you do eventually have to ship something and you can never have anything like windows 100% bug-free, it wouldn't kill them not to be in such a hurry to get the next big update out and to feature lock it 6 months in advance. Then spend the next 6 months fixing bugs. Someone commented on the front page a week ago how developers hate fixing and finding bugs. Ya well, consumers hate bugs too. Windows has gone down the toilet in the shipping buggy code department. I remember Steve Gibson talking about shipping bug-free software and how impractical and expensive it would be. Then he talked about the code that goes into these space crafts that get sent out into space to go explore other planets. That's probably the most bug-free code you will find. DConnell 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon H Supervisor Posted April 26, 2018 Supervisor Share Posted April 26, 2018 bug free is never going to be a thing. heck even reality isn't free of glitches Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neufuse Veteran Posted April 26, 2018 Author Veteran Share Posted April 26, 2018 2 hours ago, Brandon H said: bug free is never going to be a thing. heck even reality isn't free of glitches Well... that's because they haven't patched the matrix yet jnelsoninjax 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Montage Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 There's "Bug free" meaning it is flawless, but there's also "Bug free" meaning there's no outstanding documented issues Skiver 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skiver Veteran Posted April 27, 2018 Veteran Share Posted April 27, 2018 17 hours ago, Nick H. said: I agree with you. You can't make something 100% bug-free, nothing would ever get released. However, that doesn't give you an excuse for doing a half-arsed job at QA. I've worked closely with a QA team before, obviously, this doesn't speak for all companies out there but I can imagine it's probably a fairly frequent problem. These guys never have the real world experience of their end users, so sometimes what appears to be half-arsed is just blind naivety. Which then also puts the issue onto the end users also, no matter how much training, the documentation you provide you just can't help some of them. I've been stood behind an end user with them mashing the keyboard when the application wasn't "quick" enough. I don't mean just pressing the key they were supposed to be pressing either, they were mashing multiple keys which obviously invoked other actions which then just interfered with the desired one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neufuse Veteran Posted April 27, 2018 Author Veteran Share Posted April 27, 2018 15 hours ago, NJL said: There's "Bug free" meaning it is flawless, but there's also "Bug free" meaning there's no outstanding documented issues what got us really going was the intel meltdown / specter stuff... the owner insists that intel knew about this bug and should of never released hardware.... yet it's pretty well documented their CPU's were working to their designed specifications... so to them bug free but we should of seen that coming and fixed it before it was discovered apparently... aka never release silicon until you are sure nothing will ever be found wrong in the future... that also lead to "we need to go AMD next hardware refresh"... which lead to "yeah until they find some undiscovered flaw too?"... response to that was "that wont happen"..... which lead to a room full of 50 developers laughing their butts off and the CEO/Owner looking pretty ###### jnelsoninjax, Dick Montage and DConnell 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnelsoninjax Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 Bugs are not bugs, they are simply 'undocumented features' DConnell 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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