8 ms·

Pretty funny how the entire HN rallied together to solve some github issue on someone's personal repo. I'll try posting some of my bugs here to see if it'll wor

by alpb 7y ago

Pretty funny how the entire HN rallied together to solve some github issue on someone's personal repo. I'll try posting some of my bugs here to see if it'll work for me as well.

dang 7y ago
There's a power-law dropoff when it comes to follow-up submissions, since the hivemind craves novelty. But it would be fun to try. Maybe it could become a thing: Bug HN! The trick would be to make the bugs interesting: weird or hard, preferably both.
- codezero 7y ago
  Bug HN might become a huge hobby for me if people follow through on that.
  - dang 7y ago
    Somebody should get it started... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22bug%20hn%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
    - codezero 7y ago
      I’ll wait for some more timely bugs ;)
- teej 7y ago
  Yep, when I sent out a call for help for a bug on HN in 2012, I got ~190 votes. When I posted the followup I got 5. It’s a little strange because for Reddit’s r/legaladvice it’s the opposite. Follow up posts can rank much more highly than the original.
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    One reason why that might be the case is that HN is a community of people that like to find and solve problems. Reddit on the other hand is passive entertainment, users are more interested in a novel problem that someone else dealt with.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      It's something else entirely. Almost all the posts on /r/legaladvice are shouting into a void. Hopefully it helps, maybe there's some interesting side discussion... But an update? That means there's actual feedback and conclusions! Something that's desperately lacking on that particular board. It's not about reddit as a whole.
    - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
      You could argue that HN, too, is passive entertainment. Many posts are exactly “a novel problem someone else dealt with”.
- SEJeff 7y ago
  That hard part would be preventing HN from doing people's job / homework here.
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    I think that would be more or less self-solving. Most homework bugs won’t be interesting, and most job bugs won’t be publishable. The only bugs that HN will want to solve, will be the ones that should be solved by the community.
    - SEJeff 7y ago
      The Gordian Bugs!
- incompatible 7y ago
  At very least, there would have to be apparently well-written source code and an apparently competent person who can't figure out the problem.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  An entomology etymology ontology difficulty-novelty hierarchy?
  - taneq 7y ago
    Bravo!
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      First fan is best fan.
- swebs 7y ago
  I think the biggest dragon to slay would be the legendary GTK issue #233 which has been open for 15 years and has become sort of a meme by now. So many people try to solve it but fail since it requires intricate knowledge of the framework. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/233
  - hiccuphippo 7y ago
    Didn't one of the other gtk derived DM replaced the file picker with their own which had thumbnail view? I thought Gnome never changed it because it didn't fit their vision.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    I dunno, but the GTK devs do not seem like a sympathetic bunch there. In fact it looks downright toxic. After reading an issue like that I would be very hard pressed to motivate myself to contribute anything.
    - mmmrk 7y ago
      My impression is the opposite: random users demanding that some devs spend their time on a tricky corner issue and getting angry about it. After reading their comments, I'd be very hard pressed to motivate myself to work on it.
      - swebs 7y ago
        Well one person actually provided a solution, but then one of the maintainers just dismissed it because it was on Github, then locked the issue.
        mmmrk 7y ago
        It seemed unclear that the patch addressed all the issues raised in the ticket, and looking at random patches still requires dev time. It is a different story when someone else actively works on getting it upstreamed and working on resolving any issues. It's about who volunteers to do the hard work. Given that no one stepped up to do it yet and random users chimed in with aggressive and/or unhelpful noise, locking the issue was adequate. I find it concerning how much abuse GNOME devs get, and I can completely understand that they respond like this.
- LockAndLol 7y ago
  That would most certainly be abused by companies looking for free labor.
ehsankia 7y ago
To be fair, it was a great nerd snipe, as it was a mysterious bug that happened when things aligned perfectly, yet still had a very good repro making it easy to test.
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
Soon: "Hacker News Code Review As A Service"
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Didn't StackOverflow already have that?
  - Izkata 7y ago
    One of the spin-off sites: https://codereview.stackexchange.com/ https://codereview.stackexchange.com/
jnwatson 7y ago
It is hardly just "someone's personal repo". coveragepy has 1k github stars and is used by nearly every Python project under the sun.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Ive been a Python (among other languages) dev for about 25 years and I've never heard about this project until just now.
  - incongruity 7y ago
    That in no way means that Ned’s work hasn’t impacted yours or that you haven’t used his work without being aware of the dependency. Just say’n is all.
  - SEJeff 7y ago
    Do you write unit tests? Do you care about coverage of your tests? Serious question.
  - srik 7y ago
    coverage.py is quite popular - it was the 55th most downloaded python package last year. For reference, virtualenv was 57th. Source: https://hugovk.github.io/top-pypi-packages/ https://hugovk.github.io/top-pypi-packages/
  - rhizome31 7y ago
    We all have blind spots.
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Time to climb out of your hole, Mr. Hermit! Seriously though, we can't know every single third-party package under the sun. But this one is more important than the average.
zaptheimpaler 7y ago
MechanicalHNTurk
the_jeremy 7y ago
I don't know about "personal repo". My employer uses this tool to help test production code.
- alpb 7y ago
  Yeah that’s how many personal repos work. I assume you don’t use Node.js or Go or Python where most nontrivial dependencies often come from non-corporate third parties.
sefk 7y ago
Part of the reason this got a good response is due to Ned himself. nedbat@ has a great reputation in several communities. Also he showed his homework. And then posted with a good, tight repro case. Fun to see the problem and the solution. Thanks Ned and thanks HN. Source: have seen nedbat@ in action.
julienfr112 7y ago
That's not funny, that's the community being nice ! I don't want to live in a world where being nice is so rare that it ends up being funny.
pjc50 7y ago
It's the kind of drive that made stackoverflow work.

by alpb 7y ago

Pretty funny how the entire HN rallied together to solve some github issue on someone's personal repo. I'll try posting some of my bugs here to see if it'll work for me as well.

dang 7y ago

There's a power-law dropoff when it comes to follow-up submissions, since the hivemind craves novelty. But it would be fun to try. Maybe it could become a thing: Bug HN! The trick would be to make the bugs interesting: weird or hard, preferably both.

codezero 7y ago
Bug HN might become a huge hobby for me if people follow through on that.
- dang 7y ago
  Somebody should get it started... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22bug%20hn%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
  - codezero 7y ago
    I’ll wait for some more timely bugs ;)
teej 7y ago
Yep, when I sent out a call for help for a bug on HN in 2012, I got ~190 votes. When I posted the followup I got 5. It’s a little strange because for Reddit’s r/legaladvice it’s the opposite. Follow up posts can rank much more highly than the original.
- vermilingua 7y ago
  One reason why that might be the case is that HN is a community of people that like to find and solve problems. Reddit on the other hand is passive entertainment, users are more interested in a novel problem that someone else dealt with.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    It's something else entirely. Almost all the posts on /r/legaladvice are shouting into a void. Hopefully it helps, maybe there's some interesting side discussion... But an update? That means there's actual feedback and conclusions! Something that's desperately lacking on that particular board. It's not about reddit as a whole.
  - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
    You could argue that HN, too, is passive entertainment. Many posts are exactly “a novel problem someone else dealt with”.
SEJeff 7y ago
That hard part would be preventing HN from doing people's job / homework here.
- vermilingua 7y ago
  I think that would be more or less self-solving. Most homework bugs won’t be interesting, and most job bugs won’t be publishable. The only bugs that HN will want to solve, will be the ones that should be solved by the community.
  - SEJeff 7y ago
    The Gordian Bugs!
incompatible 7y ago
At very least, there would have to be apparently well-written source code and an apparently competent person who can't figure out the problem.
dredmorbius 7y ago
An entomology etymology ontology difficulty-novelty hierarchy?
- taneq 7y ago
  Bravo!
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    First fan is best fan.
swebs 7y ago
I think the biggest dragon to slay would be the legendary GTK issue #233 which has been open for 15 years and has become sort of a meme by now. So many people try to solve it but fail since it requires intricate knowledge of the framework. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/233 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/233
- hiccuphippo 7y ago
  Didn't one of the other gtk derived DM replaced the file picker with their own which had thumbnail view? I thought Gnome never changed it because it didn't fit their vision.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I dunno, but the GTK devs do not seem like a sympathetic bunch there. In fact it looks downright toxic. After reading an issue like that I would be very hard pressed to motivate myself to contribute anything.
  - mmmrk 7y ago
    My impression is the opposite: random users demanding that some devs spend their time on a tricky corner issue and getting angry about it. After reading their comments, I'd be very hard pressed to motivate myself to work on it.
    - swebs 7y ago
      Well one person actually provided a solution, but then one of the maintainers just dismissed it because it was on Github, then locked the issue.
      - mmmrk 7y ago
        It seemed unclear that the patch addressed all the issues raised in the ticket, and looking at random patches still requires dev time. It is a different story when someone else actively works on getting it upstreamed and working on resolving any issues. It's about who volunteers to do the hard work. Given that no one stepped up to do it yet and random users chimed in with aggressive and/or unhelpful noise, locking the issue was adequate. I find it concerning how much abuse GNOME devs get, and I can completely understand that they respond like this.
LockAndLol 7y ago
That would most certainly be abused by companies looking for free labor.

ehsankia 7y ago

To be fair, it was a great nerd snipe, as it was a mysterious bug that happened when things aligned perfectly, yet still had a very good repro making it easy to test.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

Soon: "Hacker News Code Review As A Service"

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Didn't StackOverflow already have that?
- Izkata 7y ago
  One of the spin-off sites: https://codereview.stackexchange.com/ https://codereview.stackexchange.com/

jnwatson 7y ago

It is hardly just "someone's personal repo". coveragepy has 1k github stars and is used by nearly every Python project under the sun.

hermitdev 7y ago
Ive been a Python (among other languages) dev for about 25 years and I've never heard about this project until just now.
- incongruity 7y ago
  That in no way means that Ned’s work hasn’t impacted yours or that you haven’t used his work without being aware of the dependency. Just say’n is all.
- SEJeff 7y ago
  Do you write unit tests? Do you care about coverage of your tests? Serious question.
- srik 7y ago
  coverage.py is quite popular - it was the 55th most downloaded python package last year. For reference, virtualenv was 57th. Source: https://hugovk.github.io/top-pypi-packages/ https://hugovk.github.io/top-pypi-packages/
- rhizome31 7y ago
  We all have blind spots.
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Time to climb out of your hole, Mr. Hermit! Seriously though, we can't know every single third-party package under the sun. But this one is more important than the average.

zaptheimpaler 7y ago

MechanicalHNTurk

the_jeremy 7y ago

I don't know about "personal repo". My employer uses this tool to help test production code.

alpb 7y ago
Yeah that’s how many personal repos work. I assume you don’t use Node.js or Go or Python where most nontrivial dependencies often come from non-corporate third parties.

sefk 7y ago

Part of the reason this got a good response is due to Ned himself. nedbat@ has a great reputation in several communities. Also he showed his homework. And then posted with a good, tight repro case. Fun to see the problem and the solution. Thanks Ned and thanks HN. Source: have seen nedbat@ in action.

julienfr112 7y ago

That's not funny, that's the community being nice ! I don't want to live in a world where being nice is so rare that it ends up being funny.

pjc50 7y ago

It's the kind of drive that made stackoverflow work.