Quality Assurance

2024-08-26

Mutual multitasking has a bad reputation. Yet, mutual multitasking is OK, except for the low reliability of function-based programs. Apps tend to clobber one another because of low level, or non-existent Q/A (Quality Assurance) procedures.

Q/A used to be a physical department, with real people in companies in the latter half of the 1900s. Q/A had the power to nix delivery of a product if the product was found to have bugs in implementation or in design.

Q/A departments used to use a variety of techniques, often nefarious when viewed from the perspective of developers, to excite bugs into visibility in products before shipping. Today, only one of those techniques survives in popular form - regression testing, rebranded as CI (continuous integration).

To further decrease the quality of shipped software, we saw the emergence of CD - continuous delivery. Its use implies that developers don’t need to care about the quality of their software nor of their designs. They can “ship now” and send updates and upgrades later. End-users are now the Q/A department, and, they pay for the privilege.

We live in a wonderland believing that type-checking alleviates the need for good Q/A. Type-checking is a useful tool for developers (but, not for users) and can reduce development turn-around, but, it doesn’t abolish the need for quality assurance.

MMU chips invented to help function-based engines and to fight issues of the low quality of apps.

See Also

References: https://guitarvydas.github.io/2024/01/06/References.html

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