swampjedi

Libs, Ahh, Adam Smith. I guess some COULD argue that there are externalities here that somewhat reduce Rationalism's usefulness as a model, but I think they'd be wrong in this case. Seems like we're on the same page - except the bit about QA. As I've seen (and studies show), QA is the first thing that gets cut when time gets short. And time, alas, is created by management.

Libs, Fair enough - but as a business, they WILL do cost/benefit analysis. Is it better to rush updates to market, or to thoroughly test them and let players do the testing? For that matter, Ford does the same thing. When you look at it from the vantage point of the almighty dollar (or pound, heh), it's probably far cheaper to release early and let the players test it for free, and pound out patches for two or three hours. Management's decision, not developers. Rip them a new one, but leave the ones who do the real work alone.

xpx, Your post set me off. Perhaps I should have read more, for context. For that, I apologize. It sounds like what you're trying to do is gripe at management for rushing stuff, and not at developers/testers for doing the best they can with deadlines. I'm in total agreement with that. Heck, that's the REAL challenge of the work. The technical stuff is fun (most coders would agree), but the politics and management stupidity is what makes it suck. It's a catch 22 - if you don't meet the insane deadline, you get in trouble. If you cut corners so you can make it, your software will be crufty, and you get in trouble. The purpose of this isn't to "lord it over", but to give some much-needed perspective from someone who has "been there, done that, got the scars to prove it." Libs, Does Ford upgrade your car every week? And hardware is VERY different than software. Software is much much harder to test.

Yeah, secrecy is a problem. I think they should just give up on it being a secret and test it with a beta world. That seems to work great for WoW! However, that would be upper management's call - not the developers. They have a sandbox to test in that is NOTHING like the real world, due to load, character builds, etc. Developers and testers can only work within the framework they're given.

Zenaku, You know what? Fine. Blame Jagex for being arrogant [puncture]s - but keep in mind that the coders aren't the public face of the company. As for "apologizing" and "reimbursing" - those aren't even possible, if you think about it. When you're that big, you CANNOT make exceptions to your rules. If they reimbursed at all, they'd have to do it for everyone. Then you'd have to hire a bunch of people just to investigate - and that would drive costs up and cut profits. It's much better for a few people who lose their stuff to quit than to do that. That's the harsh reality of business. And apologies don't even make sense. We play their game - yes, we pay, but they don't guarantee ANYTHING. They aren't a webhosting company that guarantees 99.9% uptime or something. All of that is tangential to my thread, though. sadukar123, I doubt they want to drive people away from RS - because in doing so, what they'd really be doing is driving people away from Jagex. And pissing your customers off ON PURPOSE is just bad business.

We do all make mistakes sometimes. The complexity comes in when we think about the fact that it might have been a change in a seemingly unrelated subsystem that broke the monsters. I think Jagex needs a test realm, like other MMORPGs. If you had a few thousand people "idiot testing" updates for a week before release, I think it would catch a lot more of the problems.

I am tired, tired, tired of morons spouting off about software development. Have you ever designed, developed, and released production code? I doubt it. Guess what - I have. That's my job and has been for four years (not including work in undergrad, graduate, and postgrad). Don't give me any crap about writing code for a class. That's like comparing drawing a picture of a dinosaur versus wrestling one. One is a "toy project", one will eat you alive. Where I work, we have a rigorous testing process, but things slip through the cracks. Some things to think about: As the complexity of code increases, so too does the number of bugs. Exponentially. As the complexity of code increases, the % test coverage that is practical becomes smaller and smaller. What this means is that it is intractable (i.e., so hard as to be impossible) to fully test software that is nontrivial. Unit testing isn't bad. It's relatively simple to test all of your units using a well-described process that will catch most things. Usually. Integration test is HARD. Instead of ten things to test per unit, you now have some exponential growth. Try managing integration of something with 100 classes, much less the tens of thousands that RS must have. You can't even come CLOSE to testing all of the interaction. Maybe a few % if you're lucky and have lots of time. And guess what? The code you're responsible for has to interact with someone else's code - someone you may not ever have even met. That's a train wreck. Try it sometime. On top of that, work with management breathing down your neck about deadlines (and threats of being on the street if they're not met), balancing a home life, and keeping your health. It's a high-stress job only to produce code for little ingrates who gripe about bugs. We do our best. And guess what? Our lives suffer for it. We get fat from working long hours at a desk under high stress. Our wives and kids see us for only a few bleary hours a day. We start DREAMING in code, and that seriously messes with your outlook. But we can't cut back, or our families will suffer - and it's not like jobs are easy to find right now. Note that I am running under the assumption that Jagex is competent. I think that's fair - RS as a whole runs amazingly well for something that's updated once a week. Oh. And code that is updated is code that gets broken. Guaranteed. I can't imagine updates to my project every single week - I'd go crazy trying to manage that. The more you change, the more that breaks. So yeah, shut the ever-lovin' heck up. You work that job for a few years, THEN you can gripe.

Massively expensive, untradable items that can be made only at 99 (and probably take buying multi-million dollar components from NPCs). Think of the bind-on-pickup epics in WoW. I swapped to Tailoring on my priest just so I could make the Shadowweave set - and the massive cost was totally worth it. Actually, untradeable products at all levels would help.

1957: Ape Atoll 1958: Penguin Points

I probably HAVE 10k hours of software design, so I'll go with cooking. I'd love to be a master chef.

Thanks for the posting. I realized I have 3k glass components in my bank - I'll be making orbs soon and seeing how they sell.

Title says it all. Do they sell on GE?

1955: Red Chins 1956: Monks

So, basically no chance for me to catch you. :-P I think I'd be surprised if I ever get 2k total without rolling combat past 89. The next 50 levels just take too long - 85 mining and 85 RC are the ones that make me cringe. What's your cash level look like? 99 Smith/Craft had to have drained some of those Santas you had stockpiled. :-)

Tallest - I've noticed a few levels on your account - you playing again? After 2k total, I will be doing combat. IF I get that far, that is. I'm thinking 6 mo best case on that.

Seeds are Toadflax, Irit, Avantoe, Snapdragon (in that order)

Ok, I kept my numbers - Total Seeds 470 Total Herbs 3178 Total Deaths 49 Average Herbs 6.76 Death % 10.43% Average Live 7.55 Stddev 1.35 This was for dwarf weed seeds. Yep, I was wrong it seems.

1949: Ranging Pots 1950: Dwarf Weed 1951: Granite 1952: ZMI 1953: Ape Atoll 1954: Oak Doors

New Best of Bank shot -

1948: Monks Now all I have left to 1950 is 99 Herb and Farm!

1946-7: Ectoing Dragon bones

1945: Penguin Points

Yeah I remember you - 8/10.

Actually, what it suggests is that the assumption you made about the coin is wrong. A fair coin is SO unlikely to land on one side 1000 times in a row that it's FAR likelier that something is wrong about the coin. That's why I am saying here. I think our death rate assumptions might be wrong.