Hi,
I've just finished another book I got for the TMS-OS library: Writing Solid Code, by Steve Maguire, a senior developer from Microsoft. It's a very good book, and I encourage you all to have a look at it.
In 1989, Microsoft had to cancel the release of a new product because of a runaway defect list. As a consequence, they had a crisis meeting to attack the problem. Out of that meeting came a new development philosophy, "zero defects", which said that developers must aim to deliver code to testing with no defects in it. Statistics showed that test teams could find only 60% of defects, but that development teams, through better coding practices, debugging checks in code, code reviews, etc could find 90% of defects. Hence it was development's responsibility to catch bugs - it wasn't acceptable to leave the job to the testers.
This book describes the coding practices which Microsft has encouraged in order to work towards the "zero defect" target. It's written in an informal, readable style, from one programmer to another, and is full of guidelines which lead to more reliable code. Some of these we already do, but those only in some places, and most we don't yet use at all.
TMS-OS is a critical project to Nokia Telecoms, and if it continues to slip and be unreliable, the consequences will be severe. This seems a particularly good time to make the development of "zero defect" code a priority, and to change the way we work in order to make that happen. In doing this, it would be silly not to take advantage of Microsoft's attempts to solve the same problem.
David
David Price, TMS-OS