Is a software development laboratory also a laboratory for exposing the charlatan.?

Safety-critical software seems to have its share of rogues.


But the laboratory where the software is supposedly being developed contains built-in traps for the office psychopath and even for that loveable old rogue, the charlatan or conman.


Typically there will be source code in for example Pascal that has also been written in Fortran.


The office psychopath tries to make everything look "above board" but after he has touched the code it no longer has a genuine feel.


If you look at the test results you will immediately see that the system has gone down hill from the day the office psychopath became involved.


The office psychopath will typically use "security" regulations to prevent oversight of what he is doing, but will have no hope of restoring a genuine "feel" to the code he has doctored.


Problems for the office psychopath will be exacerbated by other staff who try to get "a piece of the action" sticking their names on code as supposed authors. The actual author will learn ..

Is a software development laboratory also a laboratory for exposing the charlatan.?
Huh?
Reply:Code ownership by an individual is fairly rare in a well structured work place. At the very least you would expect peer code audits.





Purity of code is subjective, so is code beauty. You seem very concerned with the possibility of someone altering code in a development. There are 2 very basic tools to reduce the likely hood of this.





Unit tests %26amp; code coverage metrics. Adding a sneaky function somewhere that nobody else knows about is identified by code coverage metrics. If they add unit tests, then the tests will be reviewed. Assuming they are allowed to add new tests, depends on company makeup.
Reply:This sounds more like someone venting frustration than a genuine question.