Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Problem with MKS Toolkit 2.3 on DOS 2.X (and solution)
Keywords: mks
Message-ID: <1963@looking.UUCP>
Date: 21 Aug 88 17:55:44 GMT
References: <798@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 38

In general I have a lot of sympathy with this sort of thing.  These days
there are so many hardware and software configurations out there, that
it is effectively impossible to test everything in every situation.  A
company like Lotus has to spend millions and millions on it just to do
a halfway decent job.

In the case of the MKS toolkit, I think it's one of the worst cases
imaginable.  Operating system dependent stuff is messy.  They would have
to test it not just on every version of PC-DOS, (there are now 7 from 2.0 to
4.0) on variety of machines, but also the various MS-DOS versions, and
systems like VP/ix, DOS/Merge etc.  On top of that there are all the
networking systems like Novell.

That's for file manipulation software.  If you start getting direct hardware
manipulation, you have to start multiplying this through hardware
configurations.  PC, AT, 386, clone, PS/2.  With and without 8087, 80287 and
80387.  With all the different video cards.

Do you realize how much it costs just to OWN the hardware to do proper
testing?  And then, once the testing gets this complex, you have to worry
about the fact that there will be mistakes in the testing.

For a small to medium sized software house, the general practice is to
do extensive testing on common modern equipment, such as an AT or 386
with DOS 3.3, and then to do basic testing on the variants.  It's all
that you can truly afford.  You have to spend some time coding!

And even after all this, you still get what is known as the last minute
bug.  Something you put in when doing a bug fix on something found during
the test phase.  As much as you *should* only the very rich can afford to
restart all testing from then.  When you make last minute fixes, you do
them with care, but..

(Now I have no knowledge of the nature of MKS's problem, this is just
speculation.  And while the guys at MKS are friends of mine, this is
really just a description of a software developer's experience.)
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473