How to kill your software bugs

1. Code Review

More is seen with four eyes than with two. That is why you should regularly allow other developers to review your source code. Pair programming, on the other hand, is not for everyone and is often unnecessary. It is a method in which two developers write code together for longer periods of time. Code reviews, on the other hand, are extremely beneficial to complex, critical, or security-related code and can significantly improve the quality of your code.

2. Beta Test

Beta tests are important for maintaining the high quality of your apps. However, most of the time, releasing beta versions of the applications for minor updates isn't a good idea. On the other hand, major updates should be thoroughly reviewed by end-users and consumers before going live. You can test your program all you want, but if you can't monitor the execution environment, the chances of end-user failure are high. With all of the various device setups out there, there is a high probability that end-users will discover bugs and problems. Before sending the applications to beta testers, make sure it meets a high quality level. You don't want to waste the testers' time by allowing them to identify and report bugs that you are already aware of.

3. Logging

Using log files or live logging during development and production is a crucial and effective technique for identifying bugs, detecting concurrency issues, and analyzing and determining why an application crashed. Advanced logging tools can also log complete objects, track threads, and control distributed networks, as well as provide rich viewer tools. Rather than writing your own simple code, you can use tested and advanced libraries and software instead of writing your own simple logging system. Over the years, many open-source and even commercial offerings have been released, including our own logging tool SmartInspect for.NET, Java, and Delphi.

4. Customer Feedback

You should make giving feedback as simple as possible for your users and clients, just like reporting errors. In SmartInspect, for example, we have feedback and query buttons in the menu and toolbars. When a user uninstalls your program, you can also use a short (optional) survey. This survey should only ask a few questions, like why the consumer uninstalled your software. If a large number of users complain that your program has been uninstalled due to stability issues, you'll know that it isn't as good as you thought.

5. Write a Specification

Many bugs are the result of poorly constructed class hierarchies, inaccurate implementations, misunderstood specifications, and the resulting workarounds. That's why, before writing the first line of code, an accomplished developer or architect can write a specification containing all of the specifications and technical implementation information. However, specifications change over the life of a software program, as they often do. As a result, it's important to keep the specification up-to-date and schedule architecture changes in advance of any new or changed specifications.

6. Use a Good Debugger

If you use an IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse, or Delphi, you already have a strong debugger at your disposal, which you should take advantage of. Many developers, however, do not use a debugger in many programming environments and platforms, such as PHP, Windows Scripting, Python, and Ruby. Developers in those scripting environments often try to squish bugs by trial and error, adjusting code bits, and adding a few print statement. This is not only a time-consuming and inefficient way of finding and fixing bugs, but it's also risky if you don't completely understand the code and can't walk through it with a debugger. Get a decent debugger for your development platform as soon as possible (and there are debuggers for almost everything).

And, of cource, use ZenTao ALM!

ZenTao is a project management softwarefor agile teams. Its main features are product management, project management, test management, document management, bug tracking, CI management and todo management. It is a professional Application Lifecycle Management(ALM) , covering the core process of software development.

ZenTao was originally desinged for bug tracking and added more features around it, including Product/Sprint Backlog managment and Test management. Now it is a tool that is for managing the lifecycle of a software.