![]() The sheer volume of bugs, it seems, proves that rewriting code from scratch does not make for a better code base, it makes it worse. In Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don’t Have Testers, I wrote that Netscape “did an almost supernatural amount of damage to its reputation through their ‘testing’ methodology.” “Testing” in quotes because their methodology seems to be to ship to millions of people and then ignore any bug reports that come in. This is one thing you can’t blame AOL for when a new release of AOL ships, you don’t usually hear such an upcry about bugs. The Joel on Software discussion group was full of complaints of bugs and general instability. When they did, finally, release their software, it doesn’t seem like they did very much testing. That’s three years in which the company couldn’t add new features, couldn’t respond to the competitive threads from Internet Explorer, and had to sit on their hands while Microsoft completely ate their lunch. Lou Montulli, one of the 5 programming superstars who did the original version of Navigator, emailed me to say, “I agree completely, it’s one of the major reasons I resigned from Netscape.” This one decision cost Netscape 3 years. Way back in April, I wrote that Netscape made the “single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make” by deciding to rewrite their code from scratch. Unfortunately, it’s usually an illustration of what not to do. ![]() … and I’m very thankful, because Netscape 6.0 has been a terrific illustration of so many of the points I’ve made in Joel on Software over the last 6 months.
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