Thursday, March 19, 2009

I Can't Believe It's Not Software

In yesterday's congressional testimony with AIG CEO Edward Liddy, the following was stated by New York's Gary Ackerman:

There's a great product called "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter," but at least they have the decency to tell you it's not butter... They're calling it "credit default swaps" because if they called it "I Can't Believe It's Not Insurance," he says, maybe no one would buy it.

In last evening's lecture, I found myself comparing this to software systems. A software system is code which includes an automated suite of unit tests. The unit tests are part of the system. A program is code without an automated suite of unit tests but often "sold" as a software system. Feathers calls any code not accompanied by a suite of unit tests, "legacy software." Perhaps a better name for it could be, "I Can't Believe It's Not A Software System." I offer this in the spirit of hope that software developers assume pride in their craft (ala UncleBob Martin) and at least have the decency to tell you when they are giving you a program versus a software system.

1 comment:

  1. I've always equated this to my pure mathematics courses, where every thesis, claim, corollary, etc. needs a proof otherwise it is meaningless. For software unit, acceptance, endurance, and all of the other plethora of tests serve as your proof that the system works for the given requirements.

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