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Writing well can have several meanings. I've found that hilarious bug tickets are much better received and treated than dry ones. Maybe because they get many ey
by wazoox 7y ago
Writing well can have several meanings. I've found that hilarious bug tickets are much better received and treated than dry ones. Maybe because they get many eyeballs (of the sort that makes all bug shallow).
Here is one of the first ticket I wrote in my still current company:
Then God appeared to wazoox and told him: "You will not spread your software on the face of the world without properly testing the new features, so as not to get into trouble with a rarely used tool that proves buggy with an important customer. I said, and so be it." So it was done this way, and the courageous people of the developers wrote unit test scripts, to validate the proper functioning of each new version, whereas until now they were content to test by hand and whatever popped into their heads. Then rivers of milk and honey flowed on the earth, and the customers gave them much money; then the Lord saw it and was pleased.
- paulcole 7y agoDo it once and it's kind of clever. Do it twice and it gets a lot less fun.
- TomVDB 7y agoPlease no. Instead of a clear script, the developer now has first has to wade through word diarrhea to extract meaning. > Then God appeared to wazoox and told him: "You will not spread your software on the face of the world without properly testing the new features, so as not to get into trouble with a rarely used tool that proves buggy with an important customer. I said, and so be it." This could have been replaced with: "First test new features before sending to customer." ... ... I think. What a way to waste time of your audience.
- CalChris 7y agoYou do have a point but still let's look at it another way. It's a ticket. That means that at best it's boring and mundane. The writer knows this and is trying to convince you, to sell you, on spending some time thinking about it. Granted, you should do that anyways but First test new features before sending to customer doesn't really convince you to do that. If your text was enough then maybe it should have been a check box and saved everyone some time. All that said, there is a time and place for humor. Maybe this was it and maybe it wasn't. Dunno. Audience matters; timing matters; context matters.
- hairofadog 7y agoWriting well can have several meanings in literature, but in professional environments I'd argue it has one meaning: Writing well is writing something clear, concise, to the point. I worked with an engineer who wrote as you describe above ("hilariously") and it became incredibly tiring having to pick out the meaning of each correspondence. They took more time to read, and often important details were overlooked because they were hidden in a joke. I had to reply to nearly every message with my own summary: "So you're saying X, Y, and Z, is that correct?" Humor is wonderful, even in professional messages, as long as it doesn't detract from the messages being clear, concise, and to the point.
- wazoox 7y agoIt depends upon the subject. General bug reports must be clear and to the point. However, at times you need to have some impact.
- Noumenon72 7y agoThis isn't a bug ticket, though, it's a complaint that people didn't write unit tests. Humor works better when genuinely lighthearted and not trying to slip through some criticism. Criticism probably works better when not disguised as a parable inside a bug ticket.