Error Prevention

Michael Feathers gave this presentation two years ago and I just got around to listening to it. This is a nice summary of a handful of techniques (like Test Driven Development and Design By Contract for example) you may have heard of but never understood what they do.

He asks in the end why don't we use them more and what do they have in common?

It is worth listening to and following his slides below the video. One slide that surprised me was a study by Caper Jones showing that the defect rate by language went down as the language became a higher level language (or more OO and Functional). Assembly and C had the highest rate of defects for the ones studied.

The Ethics Of Error Prevention - Michael Feathers