4 ms·

Not a single one of these things is a bug. Design decisions, workarounds for hardware limitations, etc. But not bugs.

by teilo 7y ago

pflenker 7y ago
I disagree. Without knowing the details, there is no way to know for sure if the source of the 5 second delay was an actual bug. And the way programs where written back then, the space invaders issue looks like an unintended bug which was then simply kept in.
- teilo 7y ago
  Without looking at the GMail details, you don't know period, so you should neither agree nor disagree. Others who do know have chimed in. For example: "1 is not even close to true. I was a Gmail SRE at the time. Sends did not take 5 seconds at the time, they were handed off to the MTA right away. The MTA had the ability to delay delivery due to other projects and Gmail decided to use that feature to build undo send." So, not a bug. As for Space Invaders, the game designer, Tomohiro Nishikado, knew about the issue from the beginning, and specifically chose not to compensate for the change in rendering speed. He could have easily done so. He liked the way it played. When you intentionally design a thing a certain way, it's not a bug.
  - pflenker 7y ago
    When I left my comment, the others who do know have not yet commented. I wanted to express what you said in your first sentence, that without knowing or providing more context, it's not sensible to say that none of them where real bugs. So I disagreed with the parent comment based on the information I had at this time.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Yes there is. a) A 5 second delay might be a bug but a user would never notice anyway so it wouldn't be motivation to add "unsend", so this is probably nonsense. b) The second example is wrong (distance fog is way way older than the example they gave) which leads me to suspect the entire list is nonsense, and c) someone who worked on Gmail has replied here saying it is rubbish.

Not a single one of these things is a bug. Design decisions, workarounds for hardware limitations, etc. But not bugs.

by teilo 7y ago

Not a single one of these things is a bug. Design decisions, workarounds for hardware limitations, etc. But not bugs.

I disagree. Without knowing the details, there is no way to know for sure if the source of the 5 second delay was an actual bug. And the way programs where written back then, the space invaders issue looks like an unintended bug which was then simply kept in.

teilo 7y ago
Without looking at the GMail details, you don't know period, so you should neither agree nor disagree. Others who do know have chimed in. For example: "1 is not even close to true. I was a Gmail SRE at the time. Sends did not take 5 seconds at the time, they were handed off to the MTA right away. The MTA had the ability to delay delivery due to other projects and Gmail decided to use that feature to build undo send." So, not a bug. As for Space Invaders, the game designer, Tomohiro Nishikado, knew about the issue from the beginning, and specifically chose not to compensate for the change in rendering speed. He could have easily done so. He liked the way it played. When you intentionally design a thing a certain way, it's not a bug.
- pflenker 7y ago
  When I left my comment, the others who do know have not yet commented. I wanted to express what you said in your first sentence, that without knowing or providing more context, it's not sensible to say that none of them where real bugs. So I disagreed with the parent comment based on the information I had at this time.
IshKebab 7y ago
Yes there is. a) A 5 second delay might be a bug but a user would never notice anyway so it wouldn't be motivation to add "unsend", so this is probably nonsense. b) The second example is wrong (distance fog is way way older than the example they gave) which leads me to suspect the entire list is nonsense, and c) someone who worked on Gmail has replied here saying it is rubbish.