Conversation

I'm re-reading parts of the ZX81 BASIC Programming Manual (because of side-side-sidequest), which is the book that came with the ZX81. I had this when i was 10, and i'm time and time again gobsmacked by the amount of educational effort that went into this pack-in provided with the cheapest micro of all time. It's more or less how i learnt trigonometry, but i wanna talk about Chapter 15, which is about software engineering lifecycle management, or, as they put it, "Making your programs work".

It comes with a flowchart (for humans): two absolutely key parts of this chart, still overlooked in many orgs: 1 "Write program with as few bugs as possible"; 2 "fix them introducing as few new ones as possible".

_As few bugs as possible_

#ZX81 #SoftwareEngineering