I love unit tests as much as the next refactoring junkie, but there are very significant areas in quality assurance that TDD should not and cannot address, for instance software with emergent behavior.

I've been the unlucky maintainer of monstrous "unit tests" that were instead huge fixtures that create an alternate universe to production. Devs would write code, then spend as much time or more getting the "unit tests" to work, then have QA find brand-new bugs.

The TDD response is decomposition, but some solutions simply do not decompose well. If your s/w is well-architected, the complex parts can be built atop solid APIs that are 90+% covered by real unit tests; the complex functionality can then be exercised in regression tests and simulations, and their invariants verified in QA.

Which brings up my problem with the statement "ensure that QA doesn't find anything": if that's consistently true then one of the following is also true:

* the software is too simple to even warrant QA and indeed should be entirely automated

* the QA process misses huge chunks of functionality

* your software hasn't had a major new feature in, like, forever

* you don't have a GUI (or your GUI has a locked-down platform)

* your developers intimidate and harass QA so they are loath to really test

Effective QA finds bugs, that's what they do, and they are a godsend to a good development team.

It's not hard to get to 300-400k in the financial industry as "just a programmer" (ie not a quant), you just have to become a manager and work up the ranks a little.

The good news there is being in management doesn't mean you stop coding. Depending on the project, tech work can consume upwards of 70% with the rest dealing with PHBs.

The bad news is ... it's the financial industry, which means you're surrounded by workaholics with no sense of how much money they're making. There's a lot of stress surrounding productivity that isn't necessary from a profit-making point of view. Still, it's not as bad as partner-track litigation, and the strategic need for tech makes programming much more rewarding than in many other industries.

So no, you don't need PhDs. In fact if you're good you don't even need a tech degree. You just need to build solid systems.

Wow, can we stop calling every political action that makes us uncomfortable TERRORISM?

This is vandalism, destruction of property, whatever. Nobody is being "terrorized", nobody's life is in danger (except the activists' possibly).

Too bad for you that a) nuclear engineers don't know the first thing about oncology and b) the UN's final report is a tidy piece of apologist nonsense fabricated by the WHO selling out to the IEAE.

Nuke engineers understand how plants run. They are notoriously out to lunch when it comes to the epidemiology.

Wind and solar are pipe dreams. I don't care if I get modded down for saying that.

Yeah it really takes guts to be a raving pro-nuke on Slashdot, taking potshots at renewable energy. You really bucked the trend, there.

What really rakes in the mod points on Slashdot: any realistic argument surrounding the horrific health impacts of nuclear power. Nothing gets nerds excited like references to the devastating consequences of Chernobyl on the surrounding population (like say ... Scotland).

Much braver to make the daring claim that "nobody ever died because of a nuclear accident", because all of the respected epidemiogists sounding the alarm are really luddite shareholders in wind and solar companies right? When I want the real dirt on public health, I always ask .. a physicist or nuclear engineer, because they care about health first!

Also gutsy: crying crocodile tears for "all the mine workers killed by coal". Only an evil anti-nerd environmentalist would fault corporate negligence in failing to observe basic safety precautions leading to the needless deaths of thousands of miners. Good thing that nuclear is so safe we don't even have to worry about corporate negligence!

Here you go, HTH ...

The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. ... Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl.

A study of cancer in Northern Sweden by Martin Tondel and his colleagues at Lynkoping University examined cancer rates by radiation contamination level and showed that in the 10 years after the Chernobyl contamination of Sweden, there was an 11% increase in cancer for every 100kBq/sq metre of contamination. Since the official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) figures for the Fukushima contamination are from 200 to 900kBq.sq metre out to 78km from the site, we can expect between 22% and 90% increases in cancer in people living in these places in the next 10 years. The other study I want to refer to is one I carried out myself. After Chernobyl, infant leukaemia was reported in 6 countries by 6 different groups, from Scotland, Greece, Wales, Germany, Belarus and the USA. The increases were only in children who had been in the womb at the time of the contamination: this specificity is rare in epidemiology. There is no other explanation than Chernobyl. The leukemias could not be blamed on some as-yet undiscovered virus and population mixing, which is the favourite explanation for the nuclear site child leukemia clusters. There is no population mixing in the womb. Yet the "doses" were very small, much lower than "natural background".

- Chris Busby source

It's no different in software engineering than in running a dangerous power plant:

Heroism indicates failure.

If you need heroism, someone or something has failed: your design; your management; your organization as a whole usually. I've been a "hero" numerous times and it did feel good -- but it's macho BS to think that this is how it should be. Making hard decisions up front -- managing expectations, avoiding feature creep, understanding your operating environment -- prevents it.

In the case of power plants, it's holding the line on safety despite CONSTANT pressure to disregard it -- such as putting more spent fuel than the design allows in Unit 4's storage pond.

All the claims that what's happening at Fukushima are somehow a vindication of nuclear power betray this love for malfunction. Think about all of the heroes we'll need if storage ponds in the US (Shearon Harris anyone?) go up in flames.

What I disagree with - and in this I'm in agreement with one of the founders of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore - is that CO2 is in any way harmful to the environment

Mr Moore has graduated from protesting nuclear proliferation to being pro-nuke, advocates rainforest clearcutting, GMO crops, and appears to be a full-time greenwasher for like-minded companies (source) ...

... which doesn't invalidate his/your view. However, only referring to him as a "founder of Greenpeace" in the context of the AGW debate is a little misleading.

Your attempt to smear Assange by association with Chavez is ineffective and repellent.

Chavez may be well on his way to a hopelessly corrupt state, and while he deserves most of the blame, it is the height of historical ignorance to pretend like any other leader in Latin America has fared better. Indeed most are content to perpetuate or intensify the centuries-old pillaging of the land and nation without any return to the citizenry, whereas Chavez has made concrete achievements toward relief of poverty and illiteracy. Perhaps this is fading now; if so that is truly a sad thing to witness, like Ortega in Nicaragua. But your characterizations merely show your allegiance to the US/corporate media, only slightly more moderate than the racist attacks from the Venezuelan right.

If Chavez admires Assange, then that is probably because Assange is admirable. Like Chavez, he's made real accomplishments. And like Chavez and anyone else who has the drive, courage and ability to oppose the corporate and military masters, he's kind of a weird, egotistical dude.

Q: Do you advocate piracy?

A: Yes.

AMEN. It's amazing how rare it is to find genuine anarchist sentiment on the internet, /. included. People need to free their minds.

So far as I know there's no automatic system that will generate the comments that the author failed to put in

you've obviously not heard of The Commentator ...

I'm a manager and a coder, and more often than not, I stay later than my developers -- as does *my* boss (who's not a coder).

It's one thing to require developers to stay later every now and then; if it's fairly self-directed the work, I don't see any need to stay with them. As other comments have noted, there is a valuable role in being around to provide direction if it's needed.

The real question though is -- do you work harder/longer than your developers the other days? If you do, then their late nights are no big deal.

If you don't then stay, buy pizza, and pray they don't quit.