HW13: Chapter 8

8.7. Write a scenario that could be used to help design tests for the wilderness weather station system.

Bob works for a wilderness weather system in New Orleans, Louisiana. He begins his days at work by logging into the weather system and makes a request for the weather data to be uploaded to a satellite. One of the things that the weather system is supposed to record is the air temperature, however, one day Bob notices that the system reported that an area that was usually hot had a temperature of 0. He uses the method for restarting weather system instruments and now the system is correctly reporting the temperature.

8.10. A common approach to system testing is to test the system until the testing budget is exhausted and then deliver the system to customers. Discuss the ethics of this approach for systems that are delivered to external customers.

            To me, it would be unethical to base system testing solely on budget constraints. It is possible that software engineers are able to extensively test their products before delivering it to their customers and remain within budget. However, they could also recklessly blow through their budget and consider their products ready to be delivered once the budget has been spent. In this case, it would be unethical because going solely off of a dollar amount for testing instead of putting however much time is needed into testing might result into a poorly functioning software that, in some cases such as medical or safety software, could cause harm to someone.