Saturday, December 31, 2011

The new year bug. Are you aware of it?

Happy new year everyone. But do you realize that the high severity bug and the workaround in the new year?


Here's the Requirement --- That the people of the world have a time period that they can gather together to celebrate the completion of 1 full cycle of the earth around the sun.

Expected Behavior - That the sun completes 1 full rotation around the earth at 12 PM on Dec 31.

Actual Behavior --- It takes some more time for the sun to complete 1 cycle; that's why we have the leap year.

End result --- All of us accept this bug; we have changed our lifestyle to have the leap year so that we have a life around this bug; and life does not stop, it goes on.

Most high severity bugs are like this; but what we fail to realize is that there's a workaround every bug. You just need to tamper around the design to make the bug extra-special (like Feb 29) and change life. Not every bug needs fixing; they just need workarounds.

But don't get misguided by me; most often, this would be a failed argument when you have vice-presidents and directors on the other side of the table.

And my Lesson Learnt --- Every bug has a workaround; it depends on how you try to make it sellable as a special feature so that the world accepts the workaround. Else, you better fix it :)!!! Happy new year and happy "testing times" to all of you in 2012!!!

3 comments:

  1. Just discovered this awesome blog.
    Wanted to point something out about the leap-year bug workaround:
    Notice that it creates a lot of new problems - we have to account for special features in every calendar that we produce, check for strange behaviour of all software/hardware products that have some type of date mechanism (for example Zune mp3 players stopped working on Dec. 31 2008) also make sure everything works as expected for people being born on feb. 29th, etc.

    So sometimes it might be easier to fix the bug in the first place instead of creating one new hack after another to compensate :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just reading backwards the posts in your blog.. Amused to look at your test case!! The Sun doesnt rotate around the earth. Its the opposite if I didnt get you wrong from what you said. Is this a workaround too :)

    ReplyDelete