21 Sep
2011
21 Sep
'11
12:29 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ian King
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 12:12 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: RE: RANT: Never enough room
[snip]
Too many people never seem to learn that a program that works is NOT
"correct" unless it would also work with bad inputs or other conditions.
"Your program worked! That's a very good START. Now, what happens if
the
user types in 0 for the input value? What
happens if the user types in
"NO" instead of a number? What happens if the user puts a space in the
middle of the name that they are supposed to type in?"
Many, many years ago, back before I'd learned anything like QA or test
methodology, I was writing an application (command line!) that required
freeform user input. After I'd thought of everything I could think of, I asked
the office manager to help me out. I didn't tell her anything about the
program (although she knew the general idea of it) and asked her to just
type any sort of thing that popped into her head. When she couldn't crash
the app or corrupt the database, I figured I was done. :-) -- Ian