Reminder: Software Development Is Not Easy


One of my consulting clients has often complained that the applications the business uses aren’t bullet proof. Given the amount of money this organisation spends on IT, it’s their view that application bugs are unacceptable.

Desk picture from Shutterstock

I freely admit that in a utopian world software bugs would never hit production but the trouble is that we expect a lot from our software developers. They need to anticipate the actions of every user (who may or may not follow directions well), trap every possible error and anticipate every possible action. What many people fail to realise is that software development can be an extraordinarily complex business.

Here’s a good case in point. Over at the Sophos Naked Security blog, Paul Ducklin goes through a detailed analysis of how a long-missed bug cost online currency business Bitcoin, about 25 per cent of its value. Ironically, it wasn’t the bug that cost money but the fix that was subsequently introduced.

As Ducklin says: “The moral of the story is: test, test and test again”.

Anatomy of a problem – Bitcoin loses 25% in value due to a long-missed bug [Naked Security]


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