“Java-driven code quality” was the topic of discussion during a recent SYS-CON.TV Power Panel discussion held at the Reuters studio overlooking Times Square in New York. Moderated by SYS-CON Publishing Director Jeremy Geelan, the panel featured industry analyst Judith Hurwitz of Hurwitz and Associates, Enerjy Software CEO Nigel Cheshire, Instantiations CEO Mike Taylor, Mark Lambert from Parasoft, and Barry Mullan from Agitar Software.

Hurwitz noted at the top of the discussion that “quality is not a new thing; we’ve been looking at these issues as long as there has been software. But it has ben relegated to the back office for the past 15 years, (and only recently changed) as software became exposed to the web.”

Cheshire said he thought “the agile movement” has brought “quality-related behaviors more into the mainstream. The idea of unit testing and pair programming—which provides an almost real-time code review—(means that) all of a suddent (quality) issues have come into the consciousness of the software development industry."

The discussion, which lasted nearly an hour, covered several major themes, including automated testing and its benefits, the impact of open-source software on testing, the sheer complexity involved in most software development projects, and how legislation is changing the executive mind-set towards testing.

As Lambert pointed out, “managerial buy-in is critical; without it, you’re not going to succeed.” He said that in the past many developers “couldn’t always see why they were doing testing” if they couldn’t do it quickly and get a high return-on-investment. “If you’re spending hours and hours on it, you can’t (always) see why you’re doing it.”

Taylor added to this insight by noting that “developers crave the ‘oh-wow factor’ from their users. They crave innovation, not testing.”

Geelan asked about the limits of automation to address this mindset, with Taylor noting further that “what we do is automate a lot of testing. We take the burden off the developer, who really wants to be an innovator.” But Mullan noted that companies still need “to keep developers focused on quality. You don’t want to take that task and responsibility completely from them.”