

Ask HN: Forcing programmers to fix their own bugs result in better code quality? - ncryptd

I'm a programmer who works for a consulting company, and I've been assigned to a project where I'm fixing lots of issues created by other programmers, none of whom are still on the project.  I have an issue with this, as I think it breeds bad quality (or at least doesn't facilitate better quality) by not assigning any real responsibility to the original authors.  What do others think?  Would adopting a model of requiring programmers to be responsible for x% of their own bugs lead to writing better code in the first place?
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mgkimsal
forcing them to have written tests beforehand would probably have avoided many
of them in the first place I bet.

What you describe could be dealt with by having a team lead review things and
assign some of the bugs back to the original developers. Done right, this can
indeed increase some quality issues over the long haul.

The problem with this can often be the bugs are there not because they're lazy
but because they really don't know a good way to solve the issue, and may not
even have recognized the bug potential at the start. The 'fresh pair of eyes'
argument has a lot of merit, but it tends to result in other people cleaning
up for the original devs, which you're trying to avoid (I don't blame you).

Talk with the team lead(s) and see if they can divvy up some bugs back to the
original devs, then track if those same mistakes get made by the same people
or not.

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doki_pen
At the very least, it would create a feedback loop that would allow them to
learn from their mistakes.

