Re: Error handling in C

Richard Heathfield wrote:
Golden California Girls said:

Richard Heathfield wrote:
Malcolm McLean said:
However games are so complex that it is
impossible to cover all combinations of states. You could throw
safety critical type software methodology at it, but that would
increase costs and, just as importantly, development time.
Your claim is that shoddy work is acceptable. It is not a view
that I share. Yes, doing things right is expensive. But doing
them wrong is invariably more expensive in the long run.

Spoken like a true academic.

Dear Mr Girls: this has nothing to do with academe. Paying customers
in the software industry want results, not lies.

You are talking about the wrong industry. It is the entertainment industry that
puts out games, not the software industry.

They are prepared
to recognise the inevitability of bugs appearing in production, but
they want a mechanism in place for fixing them. Companies that lie
to their customers are not in it for the long haul (whether they
realise this themselves or not).

In the real world, perfection is *not* required - but excellence is
valued highly. If a bug makes it into production, pretending it
isn't there is hardly a hallmark of excellence. The proper response
to a known bug is to publish its existence, together with a
workaround if one is known and a fix-by date if one is available.

So in the entertainment industry if the DVD of the Movie has a continuity bug,
say in one shot the flowers are on the left side of the desk and in the next
shot on the right side of the desk, you want them to reshoot the movie and issue
new corrected DVD's.

The audience for games is not you Mr. Heathfeild, it is children. If they never
sell you a game, it is not a loss to them. They don't want or need you as a
customer. It costs them too much to support you as a customer. In fact if they
could I bet they would turn it into a marketing plus to put a statement in the
legalize saying you weren't to buy or play the game.
.

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