connect four (game)

[nospam.Michael Torrie]

On 11/26/2017 07:11 AM, bartc wrote:
>> You may argue that testing doesn't matter for his small game, written
>> for his own education and amusement.  The fact is that software in
>> general is of abysmal quality across the boards, and promoting a habit
>> of unit testing is good, even for trivial, home-grown stuff.
>
> I thought people were being hard on the OP.

I wasn't being hard on the OP. My observation is about the state of
*all* software.  My software especially, your software, Microsoft's
software.  It all is of rather poor quality compared to the rigors of other
industries like civil engineering, manufacturing, etc.

> As for testing, I remember in a company I worked in, a complicated
> circuit was submitted to a company that would put it into a
> mass-produced chip. This company did massive numbers of emulated tests
> shown on a huge printout that showed that all combinations of inputs and
> outputs worked exactly as intended.
>
> Except the actual chip didn't work. As for the printout, the designer
> took it home and used it as an underlay for a new carpet. A rather
> expensive underlay.

That's unfortunately, but seems to reinforce the notion that adequate testing
is required.  Clearly for a microchip, theoretically testing the chip's
"software" (for lack of a better term) was not adequate.  An analogy to our
software situation is that someone tested the algorithm, but not the actual,
in-use implementation of the algorithm.