Re:Things nobody told me about being a software engineer
by mattmanser on Wednesday November 14, 2018 @07:51AM
(#18449450)
Huge amounts, you don't have a million users for failed projects.
I still maintain various code bases for multiple clients that are over 10 years old, at varying levels of TLOC (10k, 100k, million k).
The truth is bugs almost never come back like that. I know because of the thousands, maybe 10s of thousand, of bugs I've fixed over the years.
I usually focus on end-to-end tests: when I had a new feature or do some refactoring I don't have to try things manually. I just launch my test suite go prepare some coffee and if the suite passes I'm confident in not having broken anything. Also writing new tests for new features helps thinking about the edge-cases you'll encounter.
When someone reports a bug I reproduce it. Then I write a test reproducing the problem. And at last I correct it. Now I know 6 months or one year from now I won't have a regression and see this bug coming back. People really hate when something they reported months ago is a problem again.