What Martin Fowler thinks about software quality
Chief scientist at Thoughtworks and author of Refactoring, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and Refactoring: Ruby Edition. His bliki at martinfowler.com has been the reference text on refactoring, testing and architecture for two decades.
Martin Fowler did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
5 dated positions, 2012 to 2019, in their own words. Our reading of what Martin Fowler has said — not written or endorsed by them.
-
Their wordsWith this article I'll explain that this trade-off does not apply to software - that high quality software is actually cheaper to produce.
↗Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?martinfowler.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsDevelopers find poor quality code significantly slows them down within a few weeks.
↗Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?martinfowler.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
- 7 years earlier
-
Our readingTest coverage is a tool for finding untested code and says nothing about how good the tests are.
Their wordsTest coverage is of little use as a numeric statement of how good your tests are.
-
Their wordsIf you make a certain level of coverage a target, people will try to attain it. The trouble is that high coverage numbers are too easy to reach with low quality testing.
-
Their wordsI would be suspicious of anything like 100% - it would smell of someone writing tests to make the coverage numbers happy, but not thinking about what they are doing.