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by Ben Hosking.
Original Post: Code changes whilst installing - now that is last minute
Feed Title: A Funny Java Flavoured Look at the World
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Feed Description: The blog looks at using Java and programming in general as it pops up in life as a Java programmer. It will have links to interesting Java articles and resources. It will also have a lot of SCJP Java 1.5 information and links as I am currently studying
I'm out on site up in cannock chase again, it is has gone pretty well today. They seem happy, the installation process has gone okay.
The problem I had today was some of the features work in the last release but when I upgraded them it didn't work in the current release but the new feature they wanted and the reason for me being here did work. A real case of you can't have your cake and eat it. To get round the problem I have rung up base camp and explained the problem and they are going to have a look at it and see if they can resolve it and send me an update by before the end of the day, the error is
ERROR 2006-05-25 10:25:37,828 :: : Map : renderMap - Unable to set map grid java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: -1 at java.lang.String.substring(Unknown Source)
The error looks suspiciously like a Mickey mouse bug where the problem is due to a search in a string which they are expecting to always return a value. I bet its something like they have been passed a blank or a null and then the search hasn't found anything and you get an error like this.
This is also a good excuse for me to bang my unit testing drum because this might have been caught if we had been testing for it because I find that writing Junits often finds lots of silly bugs like this because when writing the tests you tend to think what would happen if I passed a null, what should happen if the method doesn't find anything.
I think I am going to suggest to the developers that we bring in a daily or maybe to start with a weekly build and then quick test of all the front end functionality. At least armed with this I will have a very persuasive argument, I have evidence that we need to stop putting bugs in before the customers get the software.
I wrote the above in the afternoon whilst waiting for the boys back at HQ to send me an update to fix a few bugs (yes we were still coding whilst I was on site installing). The chaps back in the office did a very good job today, I think I had three updates and at the end of the day the application was look pretty sexy and customer was happy. It had a few bugs but the main thing was it worked and I did explain that it was pretty much a prototype but it's a good opportunity for them to help improve the product and have their say how the final improvements should be made.
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