Here's a portion of a screen shot I took earlier yesterday evening:
The portion I've highlighted must surely have been a copy-and-paste mistake, as it's totally out of context. More to the point, shouldn't this should have been:
(a) proof read by the author
(b) proof read by an editor
They can argue about who's fault it is :)
This started me thinking (again) about issues like this in my line of work. Make no mistake - back in software development land we also have snafu's that slip out into production - like a message box displaying debug information that wasn't commented out before a build.
If found out in the wild, the blame-game starts in all earnest and will inevitably lead to a developer saying "That's not my fault. QA okayed it to be released" with the rebuttal on many an occasion being "We can't test every little change you do, only portions that we thought were important/had time to test/etc".
I have two conflicting thoughts about this type of scenario. The first is that it's the developers fault. I feel that this is just plain sloppy on his or her part (or mine, for that matter) and shouldn't have been left in production code.
My second thought is that it's QA's fault. QA has the final say. They should have tested the software properly and they ultimately had the say as to whether it was OK to be let out into the wild.
So where does that leave me? Well, actually, the conflict in my head getting less, and is only because I'm fighting the instinct to blame someone else. Jeff Atwood wrote an article about where the responsibility lies, and I'm trying to take this stance in my work. I am aware now, through a lot of personal habit changing exercises, that I'm responsible for the code I wrote and that eating humble pie on the odd occasion is something I have to do to become a better programmer