Amalgamated Inter-Kludge

To: All AIK Technical Staff
From: You know who
Subject: AIK Quality Control Test Suite

It has come to my attention that some members of the programming staff are not making full use of the AIK Quality Control Test Suite, with it's range of tools for improving productivity and quality programming.

In fact, rumor has it that some staff members are making use of the following UNAUTHORIZED quality measures:

• Dijkstra's Test: is there a correctness proof for this program? if so, then ship it.
• Knuth's Test: does this program work for all possible inputs? has it passed a systematic torture test? is it documented? then ship it.

These measures of program quality are not authorized for the simple reason that they retard completion of software, thus reducing our overall level of output, and generally making us look bad. Dijkstra is well known as anti-democratic, and unconcerned with the problems of the average programmer; and of course, he also eats quiche. Knuth has done some good hacks^[H^[H^[H^[H^[H^[H work in his day, but he has obviously spent too much time associating with quiche-eaters. I repeat: THESE QUALITY CONTROL TESTS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED.

For ease of reference, I append a summary of the approved tests; as you will recall, the approved methods of quality control for AIK development projects are Andrews's Test (for internal projects), and any of the variants of Damen's Test (for outside projects, under normal circumstances); the other tests are listed primarily for comparative purposes, and because they may on rare occasions be mentioned in agreements with outside clients. Since it increases software development costs without reducing the maintenance budget, the MQM test may NOT be used in practice without prior consent from management. The TQM test, owing to its similarity to a portion of Knuth's test, may not be used under any circumstances. (You will recall that tests showed that although the TQM test, and even the MQM test, do reduce problems for users, using TQM actually has no effect on the amount of money budgeted for maintenance; this is because our maintenance and user-support budget is zero already.) Frivolous requests to apply excessively strict quality control standards will result in a notation in your personnel file.

• TQM (Total Quality Management) Test: does this program work for all possible inputs? if so, then ship it.
• MQM (Mostly Quality Management) Test: does this program work for most expected inputs? if so, then ship it.
• Andrews's Test: is there at least one set of inputs for which this code produces the expected results? then ship it.
• Damen's Test (strict version): did it compile without syntax errors? then ship it.
• Damen's Test (relaxed version, for rush periods): did it compile without crashing the compiler and/or the operating system? then ship it.
• Damen's Test (for emergencies): is there a file of the correct name on the system? if so, then ship it.
• Damen's Quick Fix: if the emergency version of Damen's Test is failed, then (a) rename some other file and (b) re-apply Damen's Test).