[SystemSafety] Modelling and coding guidelines: "Unambiguous Graphical Representation"

[Derek M Jones]

Paul,

> Whilst it is true that quality or safety cannot be inspected into a product
> the Fagan Inspections can and do prevent bad code going further so
> long as the process can keep the bad code from passing by.

What is bad code and how does one detect its presence?

There are obvious errors, such as use of uninitialized variables.

There are suspicious constructs, that is use which experience
has shown to be unintended, such as assignment rather than equality
test in an if-statement (i.e., one = instead of two).

Suspiciousness is not a binary variable.  A cost/benefit decision
has to be made about how suspicious a usage has to be before it
is worth investing time looking at it (and estimates of suspicious
have large error margins associated with them).

-- 
Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com