Re: AS Quality Assurance (was: Re: 9.2.2 Update effects on applescript)
Re: AS Quality Assurance (was: Re: 9.2.2 Update effects on applescript)
- Subject: Re: AS Quality Assurance (was: Re: 9.2.2 Update effects on applescript)
- From: JollyRoger <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:31:36 -0600
On 12/11/2001 6:24 AM, "christian vick" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
on 11.12.2001 2:38 Uhr, Jolly Roger at email@hidden wrote:
>
>
> I'm personally amazed that this bug wasn't caught in the QA cycle BEFORE the
>
> product shipped. Has Apple done away with AppleScript quality assurance?
>
> Surely if a QA team had bothered to actually run some scripts in 9.2.2,
>
> they'd have come across this problem, no?
>
>
I don't think there is a dedicated person for QA. The 9.2.2 problems would
>
have been noticed, surely (and many other obvious problems in the past). I
>
don't understand this. It affects thousands of AS developers and even a lot
>
more users who are using our scripts. In my case at least 5000 users are
>
affected if they update to 9.2.2. :-(
>
I can't count the number of hours i spent in the past to adapt scripts to
>
new AS versions and to workaround bugs in general. This is what really
>
bothers me with AS!! I could easily be double-effective if AS would be
>
better tested and bugfixed.
It's a sad day when Mac users can no longer count on the quality software
they are used to getting from Apple, and must instead grow accustomed to
putting on software beta tester hats. As you point out, this is especially
true for AppleScript, where "one small bug" can effect literally thousands
of users.
>
QA Manager for AS would be a dream job, you could easily test new AS builds
>
with some scripts that involve nearly all of the commands, just looking for
>
the proper end result of the script. :-))
Well I doubt it would be a dream job. That really depends on what kinds of
development processes are in place in Apple engineering, and of course the
pay. ;^) But it could be fun, if the company as a whole supported the QA
team.
>
From what i know of real Mac programming (that's not much :), the OS toolbox
>
fixes functions by releasing always a new function to _supplement_ the old
>
function. This ensures that apps which rely on a specific behaviour of a
>
function are still calling the old version of the function and therefore
>
just working fine with all newer versions of the OS. That's why even very
>
old apps usually just work fine in current OS versions.
Toolbox APIs are maintained and added to while maintaining backwards
compatibility; but it's rarely done by adding supplemental functions to the
mix. Existing toolbox routines are updated regularly to keep up with
current OS releases, new technologies, etc. New functionality is fitted
into existing functions whenever possible without breaking the existing
functionality. For example, new values are added to the accepted range for
a parameter in a function - that way older apps can call the function using
old values, and newer apps can call the function using newer values. New
routines are only added when absolutely necessary.