At his year's IT Days event, one of the most voted presentations was on quality. The presentation was about the process of manufacturing a large number of electronic components that can last tens of years despite extreme and intensive usage. Quality can generate a software platform, an operating system, and make an online service run for a very long time without interruption while some updates occur in parallel. Creating quality products and services is not only about development, but also about the test cycle. We have recently visited automotive R&D and production sites. I was particularly impressed by the testing laboratory. The steps to test electronic components are numerous and deal with material aspects such as: Physics, electronics, thermal treatment, microscopics, humidity, explosion/overheating and even spectometrics if necessary. Compared to the testing time of a software product, subjecting physical products to testing involves a long time which can stretch up to several months. Despite the fact that there are automatic tests in production, which facilitate the visual inspection of electronic components through AI, in the testing laboratory each connection is analyzed manually under the microscope, if necessary. As developer who ran development teams, I can say that testing a product usually last a couple of days for software products. We could ask ourselves if software testing is not too lenient towards possible errors. Beyond any software testing specifics, perhaps we should learn something about testing time and duration from hardware manufacturers. Fast does not always equal profitable, especially if the product has millions of users. Even if users have got used to patches and updates, we should ask ourselves: How would it be if the software I develop and test could last 20 years?
Coming back to this issue, we invite you to read several SAP papers: From Waterfall to Agile in SAP, Data import in SAP HANA and A brief overview of SAP Solution Manager. Another paper refers to an application, ClujBus, which exists on AppStore for quite some time. It is very useful and I personally use it when I don't want to be stuck in a bus station for too long. The paper describes the application and some of the technologies used to create it. As for the startup section, it presents four projects related to healthcare. The paper We are what we write a hint to the _haina il face _pe _om proverb is an invitation to discover the beauty of writing code._ What strategy should we apply in the case of mobile applications when the user prefers portrait mode or landscape mode? It is question to which: Landscape? Portrait? No problem! tries to provide an answer. Two hot topics, blockchain and intelligent agents, can be found in Blockchain technology and Developing virtual agents with Microsoft Bot Framework, which will hopefully tickle your interest. At the end, a new Gogu moment: Gogu and negative reciprocity.
by Adina Verzes
by Diana Costa
