The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Define "Code Complete"

We've got several developers here bantering this term around to mean different things. I can't actually find what this term is supposed to mean. Does it mean ready for beta? Ready for RC? Gold?

All I know is I read the book and I can't even remember it being defined in there. =)

Richard Kuo
Monday, January 19, 2004

Alyosha`s Law: software is never "done" - only occasionally shipped, and then eventually abandoned.

Anyways, when I hear the term "code complete", it means to me that the full spec has been implemented entirely, but not completely debugged. (in other words, it's a weasel term used to give the impression that most of the work is done when in fact the hard part has just begun).

Alyosha`
Monday, January 19, 2004

It's the equivalent of topping off for a skyscraper!

Joel Spolsky
Monday, January 19, 2004

There's generally a point where the dev team sits back, breathes a sigh of relief, then goes out to get drunk.

That's "Code Complete"

Philo

Philo
Monday, January 19, 2004

For us, "Code Complete" means one of two things.

(a) A really good book:

http://www.stevemcconnell.com/cc.htm

(b) The point at which we're done coding features on a project. This does not mean we're done. It does not mean we're even done coding. We're simply done coding new features. There may be some additional coding to get past bugs found by QA.

Your mileage may vary. I've seen the term used differently by different shops. You'll probably get a bazillion answers to this ont.

Sgt. Sausage
Monday, January 19, 2004

Like any other milestone, "Code Complete" means whatever the project team agrees to have it mean. It always amuses me when people throw around terms like these:
Alpha
Beta
Final
GM
RC
"Code Complete"
"In Integration Testing"
"Bug-fix release"
"Feature-based release"
without any definition associated with them, as if they had some inherent meaning. I've even heard people arguing over the "true meaning" of "Beta".

Project milestones are the ONE THING everybody on the project has to agree on the meaning of. It doesn't matter if you want to call them "Alpha, Beta, and Golden Master", or "Feature Complete, Code Complete, and Ready for Release".

But if management thinks "Beta" means "Customers could use this to try out the new version without too many annoyances", and the development staff thinks "Beta" means "all the features are implemented, but some things don't work at all, and crashes that lose all your work are likely", you're headed for trouble.

-Mark

Mark Bessey
Monday, January 19, 2004

Now that we've got that out of the way... anyone know the definition and origin of Zarro Boogs?

Joel Spolsky
Monday, January 19, 2004

I always though beta meant that you couldn't find amy more bugs so you were releasing it to the customers so they could find them for you.

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

And alpha is simply that you want somebody to share your pain!

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

From my experience, Zarro Bugs is the same as 'Zero bugs', but said in a knock-on-wood-don't-jinx-the-project kind of way.

As far as origin is concerned, the first time I heard it was in reference to the Netscape/Mozilla project.

Nigel
Monday, January 19, 2004

I'd really like to know where it came from!

Nigel
Monday, January 19, 2004

I once worked with a tester who had a really strong Irish accent. One day he came to be because he had found "tree borgs" (three bugs).

From that day on, we entered "treeborgs" into our "borg trucker" and that was that.

Damian
Monday, January 19, 2004

errr, "came to me".

I am not sure exactly how he "came to be"...

Damian
Monday, January 19, 2004

It's okay Damian.

Sometimes, when a man really likes a woman [editor: content removed for general consumption], and that's how babies happen!

Nigel
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I preferred to think that the bugs were so dire they actually spawned a tester to bring attention to themselves ^_^

Mediocre ASP Monkey
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

This is the earliest mention I could find of "Zaro Boogs" on either the web or usenet:

Quote:

One of the most cynical geek-t's ever produced (also one of the funniest). When it came time to ship Communicator 4.0 this shirt was created by Michael Toy to commorate the occasion. No one was really happy about shipping the software in its current state (too big, too buggy). The front of the shirt said "Zaro Boogs"

The shirt was supposed to say Zero Bugs, had a few bugs, but had to ship anyway. The shirt also came in only one size, "XXXXL".

End quote. Found at http://geekt.org/geekt/morenews.cgi?section=-1&start=19 , where you can see a picture of the shirt in question. I laughed for a half an hour straight when I first heard about it (I was still using Netscape 4.7 at the time).

AFAIK, that's the canonical version of "Zaro Boogs", Joel.

John Wilson
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

When you perform a query in Bugzilla which results an empty bug list, it report 'Zarro Boogs found.', which is apparently a reference to that T-shirt.

dmooney
Tuesday, January 20, 2004