Microsoft’s New Development Workflow Begins To Show Cracks

Megalith

Megalith

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Perhaps this is why many have complained of Windows 10 feeling so beta and not fully finished.

Prior to his implementation of a streamlined operation to help ship code faster, there was roughly a one-to-one relationship between developers and those who test the code for stability and bugs. After the layoffs, which gutted a significant portion of the employees who were in the testing group, management pushed down the idea that developers should be fully responsible for their own code. This, in itself, is not a crazy idea, but the transition to this methodology is starting to show its weakness in the products that Microsoft has been shipping since the release of Windows 10.
 
Devs make the worst testers. I know this from experience. An end user is going to find something you totally missed cause you wrote it.
 
I would personally like to thank all the Windows 10 beta testers. Your continued testing is much appreciated.
Signed, A satisfied Windows 7 user.
 
Jim Kim said:
I would personally like to thank all the Windows 10 beta testers. Your continued testing is much appreciated.
Signed, A satisfied Windows 7 user.
Click to expand...

This is talking about Developers.

I'm not currently doing much for Win 10 but I've been tinkering around with Win 10 IoT and it seems fine to me.
 
Jim Kim said:
I would personally like to thank all the Windows 10 beta testers. Your continued testing is much appreciated.
Signed, A satisfied Windows 7 user.
Click to expand...

When Windows 7 becomes horribly outdated, a day that is approaching faster than many realize as the passage time is like that, yes, you will.;)
 
heatlesssun said:
When Windows 7 becomes horribly outdated, a day that is approaching faster than many realize as the passage time is like that, yes, you will.;)
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Tick Tock Tick Tock. Microsoft will provide security updates until January 14, 2020 for Windows 7. I'm good for a week or two. :cool:
 
Jim Kim said:
Tick Tock Tick Tock. Microsoft will provide security updates until January 14, 2020 for Windows 7. I'm good for a week or two. :cool:
Click to expand...

I'm surprised he tried shoveling such obvious bullshit...sounds like Ed Bott.
 
(Nice. Immediately devolved into Windows 10 sux0rz, Windows 7 rulez)

Caveat Emptor, this is coming from a guy who only experimented with programming in college and didn't inhale. My understanding is the good thing about the combination of QA automation and QA professionals is they attempt to test code paths that may not be immediately apparent to the developer or that may not be obvious to the user or come to light in normal, day to day usage. It seems logical and like a great idea to have developers take ownership of their own code by having QA responsibilities placed on them, but the developer knows what they were intending and what the code is supposed to do. They don't necessarily know what the code is not supposed to do. As great as it is to have Microsoft Insiders and in the wild telemetry, I wonder if it is irresponsible to cut tons of QA professionals. I'm also led to believe that QA is paid less than developers. If it is truly that employing a QA and development professional is redundant, than I get it. It seems that QA would be better at QA because it is what they do day in and out. Even if a dev is able to do QA just as well, it isn't their focus or specialization.

Again, this is just IMHO and from a non-Microsoft Outsider (I'm not a Microsoft employee, partner, or part of the Windows Insider program).
 
ccman said:
..., but the developer knows what they were intending and what the code is supposed to do. They don't necessarily know what the code is not supposed to do.
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I wanted to correct myself here. I don't mean to say developers lack knowledge. I just mean as someone who supports end users and servers, I can quickly recognize and hopefully solve problems going forward. I can associate new problems with problems I've seen in the past. Even then, I make the "don't hold it that way" mistake too frequently. So I would suspect someone in QA knows better what to look for and knows where things tend to go wrong in real world usage and how to test for them
 
ccman said:
(Nice. Immediately devolved into Windows 10 sux0rz, Windows 7 rulez)

Caveat Emptor, this is coming from a guy who only experimented with programming in college and didn't inhale. My understanding is the good thing about the combination of QA automation and QA professionals is they attempt to test code paths that may not be immediately apparent to the developer or that may not be obvious to the user or come to light in normal, day to day usage. It seems logical and like a great idea to have developers take ownership of their own code by having QA responsibilities placed on them, but the developer knows what they were intending and what the code is supposed to do. They don't necessarily know what the code is not supposed to do. As great as it is to have Microsoft Insiders and in the wild telemetry, I wonder if it is irresponsible to cut tons of QA professionals. I'm also led to believe that QA is paid less than developers. If it is truly that employing a QA and development professional is redundant, than I get it. It seems that QA would be better at QA because it is what they do day in and out. Even if a dev is able to do QA just as well, it isn't their focus or specialization.

Again, this is just IMHO and from a non-Microsoft Outsider (I'm not a Microsoft employee, partner, or part of the Windows Insider program).
Click to expand...

Not sure where your coming from. We were just calling out bullshit when we see it. Windows 7 is great and mature. Windows 10 is great but needs still needs some baking and tighten up the privacy thing.
 
Bowman15 said:
Not sure where your coming from. We were just calling out bullshit when we see it. Windows 7 is great and mature. Windows 10 is great but needs still needs some baking and tighten up the privacy thing.
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I apologize. I should not have included my first statement. I agree.

I am just wondering if Microsoft isn't moving too fast, relying too much on Windows Insiders, and are too quick to have the pendulum swing too far away from the successful methods they used in past versions of Windows.

I am going to be installing Spybot Anti-Beacon on my Windows 10 installation. Even if word comes down that Microsoft has rectified privacy issues, I think it is a good thing to have in place.
 
I was waiting till January to update my workstation to 10 but will probably wait till around April now.
 
I can't help wondering if Microsoft is using us as cloud QA and cloud funding.
 
Galvin said:
Devs make the worst testers. I know this from experience. An end user is going to find something you totally missed cause you wrote it.
Click to expand...

This. As a developer who is forced to test his own code, I frequently miss things that a dedicated QA person or an end user would find. Even writing unit/integration/functional tests and doing TDD isn't enough. You need a completely different set of eyeballs to spot everything, or ideally a LOT of different eyeballs.
 
Where is this x86 operating system that's free of all bugs and supports all of the hardware and software that Windows 10 supports? I'd love to use it and tell everyone using Windows to install it immediately.
 
heatlesssun said:
Where is this x86 operating system that's free of all bugs and supports all of the hardware and software that Windows 10 supports? I'd love to use it and tell everyone using Windows to install it immediately.
Click to expand...

Its in the same place where the software with as wide a user base and as large budget as Windows is.
 
HoffY said:
Its in the same place where the software with as wide a user base and as large budget as Windows is.
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Lol other than OSX? Because that sure is bug free :rolleyes:

I'm using both and Windows is providing a vastly better experience.
 
heatlesssun said:
Where is this x86 operating system that's free of all bugs and supports all of the hardware and software that Windows 10 supports? I'd love to use it and tell everyone using Windows to install it immediately.
Click to expand...

Windows 7
Windows 8

I'm not aware that 10 suddenly introduced a huge mass of new device support that didn't exist in a prior version of Windows.
 
heatlesssun said:
Where is this x86 operating system that's free of all bugs and supports all of the hardware and software that Windows 10 supports? I'd love to use it and tell everyone using Windows to install it immediately.
Click to expand...

Windows 7.

Let me know when 10 supports Cablecard.
 
Galvin said:
Devs make the worst testers. I know this from experience. An end user is going to find something you totally missed cause you wrote it.
Click to expand...

Agree, I love giving my stuff to other people. For me half the excitement is knowing someone is going to inadvertently find a flaw I missed.....and they do.
 
Galvin said:
Devs make the worst testers. I know this from experience. An end user is going to find something you totally missed cause you wrote it.
Click to expand...

As someone that manages a team of developers, I could not agree more.
 
DPI said:
Windows 7
Windows 8

I'm not aware that 10 suddenly introduced a huge mass of new device support that didn't exist in a prior version of Windows.
Click to expand...

Windows 10 does support a lot of devices that 7 doesn't. 8.x not so much but there are some incremental features. Intel's Speed Step for instance, new with Skylake processors which just received support in Windows 10 Version 1511.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Windows 7.

Let me know when 10 supports Cablecard.
Click to expand...

I've been using WMC with Cablecards for years now. It is something that I do miss. There are ways to hack that are around but I've not really tried them yet.

But we live in the age of "cutting the cord" and the numbers are becoming fairly dramatic. Cablecard support in WMC simply had no future in this environment as a niche product with an ever shrinking user base. A number of the things that I used Cablecard for I get via streaming now like WatchESPN. IP streaming of all cable TV content is inevitable I believe.
 
ccman said:
(Nice. Immediately devolved into Windows 10 sux0rz, Windows 7 rulez)

Caveat Emptor, this is coming from a guy who only experimented with programming in college and didn't inhale. My understanding is the good thing about the combination of QA automation and QA professionals is they attempt to test code paths that may not be immediately apparent to the developer or that may not be obvious to the user or come to light in normal, day to day usage. It seems logical and like a great idea to have developers take ownership of their own code by having QA responsibilities placed on them, but the developer knows what they were intending and what the code is supposed to do. They don't necessarily know what the code is not supposed to do. As great as it is to have Microsoft Insiders and in the wild telemetry, I wonder if it is irresponsible to cut tons of QA professionals. I'm also led to believe that QA is paid less than developers. If it is truly that employing a QA and development professional is redundant, than I get it. It seems that QA would be better at QA because it is what they do day in and out. Even if a dev is able to do QA just as well, it isn't their focus or specialization.

Again, this is just IMHO and from a non-Microsoft Outsider (I'm not a Microsoft employee, partner, or part of the Windows Insider program).
Click to expand...

This entirely depends on what sort of task you've mandated for your QA layer. What you describe are QA that try to break code, which is not what they all do. Some try to make sure code adheres to the original requirements. Some do quality reviews. Some will do performance benchmarking. Some do compatibility testing.

QA teams that do those various tasks good good and efficient with their tools, platforms, testing automation, and environments. Developers often have no idea how they should be testing, let alone how to effectively test in an efficient manner.

Not saying that's how Microsoft is, but I imagine those developers doing their own testing now are not very efficient, which directly cuts into their building time.
 
Galvin said:
Devs make the worst testers.
Click to expand...

As a software developer I can't agree more to this statement. I can write code and make good unit tests. Ask me to perform user level tests and I'll do ok. Get a dedicated tester on that same interface and they'll find things I could not.

Dedicated testers are a must. The best environment is when developers and testers can talk with each other. Tester can verify that there's not a fix for such and such before writing the defect and developer can go to the tester if the dev cannot reproduce the defect. Heck discussing many of the problems between the tester and dev can many times create a much better solution to the bug then a simple patch.
 
i960 said:
This. As a developer who is forced to test his own code, I frequently miss things that a dedicated QA person or an end user would find. Even writing unit/integration/functional tests and doing TDD isn't enough. You need a completely different set of eyeballs to spot everything, or ideally a LOT of different eyeballs.
Click to expand...

All agreed to this.

You just need everyone but the developers to get in there and try to break the dang thing. Give them the user stories, a crowbar, and a cash money prize for every defect they find. Tell them they get additional perks for every developer they make ball up in a corner and feel like a loser. :p

We developers subconsciously try not to break the system, because we know exactly how it was built. It's our code; we don't want to see anything broken. Hell, we write perfect code, the first time - every time, right? ;)
 
I think this method of development and OS rollout will come to a tragic U-turn. It just doesn't work for a lot of domestic and small business users. You can't just have 'new version' that rolls up and takes 3 hours to install (it does for the folks that don't know what they are doing) and then resets lots of stuff or deletes it.

I do wonder if they ever really think these things through for more ordinary users, especially the small business ones that don't have on-site IT guys or require enterprise level support infrastructure.

If MS wants to continue with this approach then the coding quality and testing has to increase several magnitude. If not people will just have to classify Windows 10 as constant Beta software. You cannot run a business on that level of support and code quality.

Windows 7's future is now assured for running the world till 2020...
 
LonerVamp said:
This entirely depends on what sort of task you've mandated for your QA layer. What you describe are QA that try to break code, which is not what they all do. Some try to make sure code adheres to the original requirements. Some do quality reviews. Some will do performance benchmarking. Some do compatibility testing.

QA teams that do those various tasks good good and efficient with their tools, platforms, testing automation, and environments. Developers often have no idea how they should be testing, let alone how to effectively test in an efficient manner.

Not saying that's how Microsoft is, but I imagine those developers doing their own testing now are not very efficient, which directly cuts into their building time.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info.

Have you heard of High assurance: seL4? Towards the end of making sure code adheres to the original requirements, is it a big deal? Should it see more use than it does currently? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#High_assurance:_seL4
 
If the devs are not off gold-plating or something of the kind, their work should be quite traceable from the implementation back to the stories and through to the original system concept(s).

As a dev myself, i know i am likely nowhere near skilled as a veteran test engineer who has a refined BoK about QA processes/procedures - but i would be quite ashamed to call myself a software engineer if i coudn't devise a rudimentary set of black box test cases, and some white box cases as well that would at least catch the lion's share of defects before making out past unit testing.
 
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