It’s probably some weird twist of fate that this post get pushed out while I’m actually doing it.

Part of the fun in developing an application is breaking it.

Most authors will test their software like they think their users will use it.  They do everything in a nice orderly fashion, pushing all the right buttons when they need to.  When they think it looks good, the software is pushed out into the wild full of all kinds of unknown hidden problems.  Do you know what they call this?

Vista.

When I get my greedy little hands on a piece of software I designed, my intention is to break it.  I enter all kinds of bizarre numbers, push buttons out of sequence, and see how the software performs.

Here’s an example:  I have a mortgage payment calculator.  The first question is “Please enter the purchase price”.  So I enter Monkey.  How does the software react?  Does it say “Error Code -3233″?  Does it do nothing?  Does it crash?

Once I know the problems, they can be fixed.

I do all this for two reasons.

1. I don’t want my customers to receive a sub-par piece of software.
2. 98% of my customers may say nothing but two percent who broke the application will complain about it in online reviews.  Then every person after that will read those reviews and it may taint their opinion.

So far, it has worked.  My Lite software has been downloaded over 1,900 times and no one has reported any breakage or calculation errors.  The complaints I have received are that the software should do more.

That’s by design.

Now the Pro version of my software is ready for prime time.  We’re just waiting for Apple to approve my contract.

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