Looking for help with debugging industrial C++ application

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Hello,

I have a customer that has developed a materials defect scanner using sensors to detect defects in the non-ferrous raw material. The scanner is developed in VS2012 using C++ and the customer is experiencing memory faults they are not able to fix. The developers who wrote the application (30k+ lines) are not CS types and needs help fixing their app to meet upcoming ship date.

I am looking for someone who can on short notice help get the application ready. Could anyone recommend a consultant, a firm, anyone to help?

Kind regards,

Atle

PS - this may be an inappropriate posting, but I trust this community, so I posted here - please notify me if there is some other place I should post this and/or take it down!

Posted 15-Sep-15 14:35pm

Atle Bjanes

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Patrice T 15-Sep-15 21:10pm

May be you can tell the state/City, I guess local consultant is better to have the app running for real.

Atle Bjanes 15-Sep-15 23:19pm

This would be in the southeast, northern GA, southern TN area. However, remote debugging/code review/support is also an option.

Stefan_Lang 16-Sep-15 3:00am

I'm not at all sure what to think of this. Is there a pointy-haired boss involved?

Seriously: if the guys who wrote it can't spot memory leaks in a 30kloc app, then there's only one sensible course of action:

1. Throw away the code and any traces that it ever existed.
2. Be thorough.
3. Then have it written from scratch by a pro.

Any effort spent on checking that code is a waste of time and money!

P.S.: an illustration of the pointy-haired boss reference above:
http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-07-26

Atle Bjanes 16-Sep-15 9:00am

No pointy-haired boss :-), just a machinery OEM oriented to cutting metal and not developing complex code. Thanks for the advice!

Stefan_Lang 17-Sep-15 3:04am

You're welcome.

Cutting metal sounds more problematic than just scanning for defects - one more reason to hire professionals for the job!

Just to get you an idea where I'm coming from: I'm working at a milling machine manufactury and the 3 million LoC app we maintain here is responsible for automatically generating NC code to mill parts at high speed out of blocks of solid metal. A mistake at the wrong place can mean a machine crashing with damages in an area that could buy you *very* nice car.

So I can understand your situation - and I can also understand how managers in industrial machine companies sometimes have no idea about the meaning of software development. Your best approach is probably to explain to them the cost of failure and hint at the damage in reputation added on top. Money and reputation are things they understand (hopefully).

Unfortunately it's hard to estimate the exact cost and effect of professional software development, but at least they should be made to understand that the TCO will be lower if they leave that work to the experts (rather than laymen), even if it costs more initially.

Atle Bjanes 17-Sep-15 12:14pm

Very sound advice Stefan - but at this point they have shipping deadlines and triaging current code is only path, however painful/costly/difficult that is... Perhaps v1 can be a ground up development using the scanner technology developed for v0.1

Philippe Mori 16-Sep-15 12:47pm

Well given that an incorrect delete can make the application crash at a totally unrelated place, it can be really difficult to find the error even though the application is relatively small particulary if you don't know how to reproduce the problem and when it crashes the information don't help much.

Atle Bjanes 16-Sep-15 13:25pm

Right on Phillipe!!!

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Garth J Lancaster · Answer 1 · 2015-09-15T15:11:00

I would have thought there were plenty of firms/consultants etc in the US (going by your profile) who could help you - me, I'd be looking at logging, memory profiling etc - its not a trivial task though - maybe whoever you find needs/will need to do a thorough design and code review as well

(personally I don't think posting that question here is inappropriate - asking 'us' to fix the issue for you, now that would be :-) )

good luck, I hope the US based CP members know someone - else I know a consultant who does such, but he's based here in Australia and is about to go on two weeks holiday ....

Looking for help with debugging industrial C++ application

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