Alexander Gromnitsky's Blog

The secret to bug-free code

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'In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Atari sold more software to more people than any other company on Earth. Most of that software was burned into ROM (read only memory) chips. Errors in ROM could not be corrected. You had to trash them and make new chips. Atari made a home computer that had an operating system in ROM. I was really impressed with that. What amazing confidence they must have in their programming to risk putting that stuff into ROM. How did they do it?

'I took a job as a researcher at Atari’s corporate lab. This allowed me to find out how Atari did it. This was their secret: They would try the stuff out, and if it seemed to work, they would send it to the factory. They were lucky. Their luck ran out when executives decided that the E.T. game did not need more testing. The company did not survive that decision.'

(From How JavaScript Works, ch. 23, by Douglas Crockford.)


Tags: quote, ойті
Authors: ag