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The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit. Fixing a bug a

The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit. Fixing a bug almost never excites users, and even if it did in this case, they won't see a measurable increase of users of their software, so you can't prove a profit increase. Even if a bug is fixed, the effort might be wasted when a large overhaul of the system happens because they want to add a huge feature, like a new searching system or some internal backend refactor. Fixing the bug might be much more difficult than you think due to the scale and complexity of their database or some other reason. Then the change needs to flow through the review and testing pipeline. My point is to explain that software gets harder with scale, which might cause a bug like this to cost tens of thousands of company dollars to fix, while the benefit to each user (and therefore the company) would be a tiny fraction of a cent, so both managers and financially-aware engineers would easily brush this off as "not worth it." Any argument of the form "why not just fix it?" would be countered with "you could say that for any of the 40k open bugs."

pdonis 9y ago
> The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit. Exactly. The answer to any complaint like the one described in this article (and I have similar ones about my phone all the time) is "how much would you be willing to pay to fix this?" Of course, it doesn't help that, even if I were willing to pay to fix this, I have no way of doing so; even if, say, 100,000 or 100 million users would all be willing to pay to fix it, so that the amount in play might actually be enough to compensate a developer to do the work, we have no way of coordinating such a payment. That's not just because the companies involved are large; it's because the software running on, say, my phone is a cost center to begin with, not a profit center. The profits come from locking users into multi-year contracts, and "too many bugs/misfeatures in the software on the phone" is so far down the list of things the phone provider is worried about people switching for that there is no motivation to spend money on it. > which might cause a bug like this to cost tens of thousands of company dollars to fix, while the benefit to each user (and therefore the company) would be a tiny fraction of a cent But if there are 100 million users, that might still work out to a tidy profit--if the users could somehow coordinate the payment, and convince the company that the alternative to accepting the payment and fixing the problem was that all 100 million of them switch providers. In the real world, of course, this will never happen.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Of course, it doesn't help that, even if I were willing to pay to fix this, I have no way of doing so; even if, say, 100,000 or 100 million users would all be willing to pay to fix it, so that the amount in play might actually be enough to compensate a developer to do the work, we have no way of coordinating such a payment. No, but we can always go and use another app that doesn't have as many problems.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > we can always go and use another app that doesn't have as many problems What other app? What apps don't have random bugs or obviously insane behavior popping up when you least expect it?
mattmanser 9y ago
This isn't a bug. Recommendations are just hard. He's trivializing it, but specifically mentions that including one 5.7 miles away would be fine. And then promptly says because he visited it before. That's some complicated intelligence and pattern matching that he's asking for. What exactly should it be ranking by? Proximity and popularity and traffic density and Google rating and awhole load of other things. The rules that Google apply obviously work for some scenarios, but not this one. Could it be better, obviously, but that's not a bug.
- bfred_it 9y ago
  I feel that Google Maps search quality has gone down in the past few years. Sometimes searching "Coffee shops" will not show anything within a mile and I have to reposition, press "Search this area" and then it will show the Starbucks a block away. Probably still better than Apple, which pointed me to a 19-hours-away store when asking for "directions to Albertsons" a couple years ago: https://i.imgur.com/jSCrToj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jSCrToj.jpg
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  Seems like a case of adding "ORDER BY number_of_previous_visits, distance" to a SQL query...
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    Having actually programmed search functionality like this I can assure you, it's really not. That's what you start with. Even if you put aside that distance is something that has to be calculated through triangulation as many systems now include that. Especially when you add in rankings, you start having to think about sorting by multiple layers, circles of distance with ranking sorted by that. So the really good match 20 miles away is shown lower than the pretty good match 5 miles away, but they're both shown above the bad match 7 miles away. And that's before you add categories, past history, any paid ranking, etc. And then the queries get really expensive and you've got to decide what to fudge or not to keep the system responsive and stop your search system eating all your CPU. And you can bet people will still find scenarios where they'll say "why's it doing this? I'd expect the order to be different". This is pattern matching and value assignment, something humans are amazing at and computers aren't.
TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
The counter-argument is that we’re (mostly) talking about profitable companies making billions a year, which will be wasting tens or hundreds of millions anyway on unneccessary spending, poor strategic decisions, and other standard corporate cash sinks. Why not gain reputation and good will by making users happy and deliberately cultivating a reputation for low-frustration, responsive, thoughtful and reliable products? Of course this is the opposite of “Get shit out fast, fix it later” and would surely be very boring to work on. But even so.
- l0b0 9y ago
  The problem is that you can't even identify, much less stop, the cash sinks - nobody seems to be able to do it in any sort of large corporation (or any other sort of organisation). Fixing some random bug that you have no impact numbers for therefore has to compete with the sexy new six-month cash sink that someone thinks will bump stats across the board. "Perfect is the enemy of good" seems to be the mantra, which would be better written as "lazy is the enemy of good." Can we not agree that this is a bullshit saying, and that nobody ever argued for actual perfection? We just have different ideas of what constitutes good (or profitable) software.
snarfy 9y ago
There is a tipping point. Just ask TSB. At some point you need to clean up your tech debt or you risk systemic failure.
- pm215 9y ago
  TSB's systemic failure was a result of trying to clean up their tech debt (and dependency on Lloyds' systems), though -- the old systems were working fine for them (and continue to work fine for Lloyds), not falling over all the time.

pdonis 9y ago

> The reason for pretty much any bug found in software driven by a huge company is that there is a large disconnect between fixing bugs and profit. Exactly. The answer to any complaint like the one described in this article (and I have similar ones about my phone all the time) is "how much would you be willing to pay to fix this?" Of course, it doesn't help that, even if I were willing to pay to fix this, I have no way of doing so; even if, say, 100,000 or 100 million users would all be willing to pay to fix it, so that the amount in play might actually be enough to compensate a developer to do the work, we have no way of coordinating such a payment. That's not just because the companies involved are large; it's because the software running on, say, my phone is a cost center to begin with, not a profit center. The profits come from locking users into multi-year contracts, and "too many bugs/misfeatures in the software on the phone" is so far down the list of things the phone provider is worried about people switching for that there is no motivation to spend money on it. > which might cause a bug like this to cost tens of thousands of company dollars to fix, while the benefit to each user (and therefore the company) would be a tiny fraction of a cent But if there are 100 million users, that might still work out to a tidy profit--if the users could somehow coordinate the payment, and convince the company that the alternative to accepting the payment and fixing the problem was that all 100 million of them switch providers. In the real world, of course, this will never happen.

coldtea 9y ago
>Of course, it doesn't help that, even if I were willing to pay to fix this, I have no way of doing so; even if, say, 100,000 or 100 million users would all be willing to pay to fix it, so that the amount in play might actually be enough to compensate a developer to do the work, we have no way of coordinating such a payment. No, but we can always go and use another app that doesn't have as many problems.
- pdonis 9y ago
  > we can always go and use another app that doesn't have as many problems What other app? What apps don't have random bugs or obviously insane behavior popping up when you least expect it?

mattmanser 9y ago

This isn't a bug. Recommendations are just hard. He's trivializing it, but specifically mentions that including one 5.7 miles away would be fine. And then promptly says because he visited it before. That's some complicated intelligence and pattern matching that he's asking for. What exactly should it be ranking by? Proximity and popularity and traffic density and Google rating and awhole load of other things. The rules that Google apply obviously work for some scenarios, but not this one. Could it be better, obviously, but that's not a bug.

bfred_it 9y ago
I feel that Google Maps search quality has gone down in the past few years. Sometimes searching "Coffee shops" will not show anything within a mile and I have to reposition, press "Search this area" and then it will show the Starbucks a block away. Probably still better than Apple, which pointed me to a 19-hours-away store when asking for "directions to Albertsons" a couple years ago: https://i.imgur.com/jSCrToj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jSCrToj.jpg
SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
Seems like a case of adding "ORDER BY number_of_previous_visits, distance" to a SQL query...
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Having actually programmed search functionality like this I can assure you, it's really not. That's what you start with. Even if you put aside that distance is something that has to be calculated through triangulation as many systems now include that. Especially when you add in rankings, you start having to think about sorting by multiple layers, circles of distance with ranking sorted by that. So the really good match 20 miles away is shown lower than the pretty good match 5 miles away, but they're both shown above the bad match 7 miles away. And that's before you add categories, past history, any paid ranking, etc. And then the queries get really expensive and you've got to decide what to fudge or not to keep the system responsive and stop your search system eating all your CPU. And you can bet people will still find scenarios where they'll say "why's it doing this? I'd expect the order to be different". This is pattern matching and value assignment, something humans are amazing at and computers aren't.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago

The counter-argument is that we’re (mostly) talking about profitable companies making billions a year, which will be wasting tens or hundreds of millions anyway on unneccessary spending, poor strategic decisions, and other standard corporate cash sinks. Why not gain reputation and good will by making users happy and deliberately cultivating a reputation for low-frustration, responsive, thoughtful and reliable products? Of course this is the opposite of “Get shit out fast, fix it later” and would surely be very boring to work on. But even so.

l0b0 9y ago
The problem is that you can't even identify, much less stop, the cash sinks - nobody seems to be able to do it in any sort of large corporation (or any other sort of organisation). Fixing some random bug that you have no impact numbers for therefore has to compete with the sexy new six-month cash sink that someone thinks will bump stats across the board. "Perfect is the enemy of good" seems to be the mantra, which would be better written as "lazy is the enemy of good." Can we not agree that this is a bullshit saying, and that nobody ever argued for actual perfection? We just have different ideas of what constitutes good (or profitable) software.

snarfy 9y ago

There is a tipping point. Just ask TSB. At some point you need to clean up your tech debt or you risk systemic failure.

pm215 9y ago
TSB's systemic failure was a result of trying to clean up their tech debt (and dependency on Lloyds' systems), though -- the old systems were working fine for them (and continue to work fine for Lloyds), not falling over all the time.