Missing Variable Since the SVN Update!

[Kyasharin]

This reminds me of a story my computer science teacher told me yesterday. He was talking about how important extensive test cases were, and that planning tests in the design phase is the thumbs-up way to go, and he was reminded of this robot car that went around a track.

Apparently, the car had been through testing, and it was this expensive project and all, and everyone was all excited about it ("ZOMG IT WORKS?!"). This thing could see and race around for itself, without a hard-wired route. Then, when the team brought it out for a demo, there was a shadow of a tree on the track, which the programmers never included in their test cases. So when it came down to it, the car started moving and it was all fine and stuff, then it passed under the shadow, and it just zoomed straight off and crashed into a tree. Perhaps they didn't think about that.

I can't imagine how that feels. Having something as trivial as a shadow screw up months of hard work.

I guess this is a wake-up call for everyone who wants to create software (whether it be a video game or missile defense system), telling us that leaving out a possible scenario in our tests can be quite troublesome.

Sorry for the random interjection. I actually didn't lose anything (I just started, so I didn't have a lot of warp saves/quests under my belt =D). Right. Uhh. My condolences to those who lost variables.