Saturday, February 11th, 2006, 5:26 am
Code that Supports Itself
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NE of the deterrents to a publishing developer are support queries, which follow a premature or ‘half-baked’ releases. Maintenance of code and replies to support queries become a necessary evil. Then come the bug reports, the question, the requests and the complaints, which can truly be a handful.
Here is my humble perspective on ways to prevent a chaotic support-bound life:
- The amount of queries depends on the extent to which you encourage or enable people to contact you
- If everything is properly documented and explained, expect a quieter time
- Programmers are notorious for writing code quickly, but neglecting to do the rest, which is ‘housekeeping’. Document your code properly as if you address support queries before they have been summoned by angry users.
Many of us vehemently loathe support-related E-mails. My public E-mail address was excruciating yet self-maintaining feedback system. That is also where bugs get reported and projected back to the public.
