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Google's lack of responsiveness to bug reports in general is really perplexing. I can understand it might take them time to address things, that they are busy

by zmmmmm 15y ago

Google's lack of responsiveness to bug reports in general is really perplexing. I can understand it might take them time to address things, that they are busy and have other priorities, etc. But the manner in which they deal with bug reports is so terse and dismissive I find it insulting. Bugs with a huge number of people following and explaining in detail the problem will get ignored, closed with zero comments, closed with 4 words of meaningless comment, etc. Just to give an example - http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8488 http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8488 It seems to me that they created the bug reporting system and then put nobody in charge of monitoring it or maintaining it and most likely no one has authority to even respond to half these bugs, except top people like Romain Guy who consider it beneath them. This is really burning a lot of good will in some of Google and Android's most enthusiastic supporters.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
One of the downfalls of only hiring the best and brightest is that those people like building new stuff, not fixing obscure bugs. Maintenance programming might not be a sexy profession, but it's absolutely necessary.
jen_h 15y ago
It's really odd. I'm following critical Android bugs from 2008 that haven't been touched by a developer. And minor bugs that a developer's commented on/scolded the "me too!"s on. And a bunch of bugs that are duped all over the place. They really could use a good, thorough, old fashioned bug scrub with QA and maintenance teams heavily involved/leading the charge. Cleaning up the bug database is a daunting no-fun task, for sure, but it looks terrible to outsiders and bug triage is a perfect place for new employees (junior developers, QA, and support staff) to get their feet wet while they still lack the emotional attachment...it's the perfect bootcamp. The stats on this would be fascinating, too - for instance, I'd love to know the percentage of dupes. :) Conversely, making senior developers responsible for triaging bugs straight from the public (and doing first line support for some of these, which does appear to happen from time to time) can lead to some serious burnout.
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  The worst problem here is one of PR. Google should at least pay some nice friendly intern to sit down and go through each bug and write a "Thanks for reporting this, we appreciate your time and I'll try and get the right person to look at it" type comment, with periodic, "Sorry there's been no progress on this, we're really busy as you can understand" - totally meaningless, but costs almost nothing and completely changes the feel of the discussion. Obviously they should do much better, but a token PR effort would be a nice minimum.

by zmmmmm 15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

One of the downfalls of only hiring the best and brightest is that those people like building new stuff, not fixing obscure bugs. Maintenance programming might not be a sexy profession, but it's absolutely necessary.

jen_h 15y ago

It's really odd. I'm following critical Android bugs from 2008 that haven't been touched by a developer. And minor bugs that a developer's commented on/scolded the "me too!"s on. And a bunch of bugs that are duped all over the place. They really could use a good, thorough, old fashioned bug scrub with QA and maintenance teams heavily involved/leading the charge. Cleaning up the bug database is a daunting no-fun task, for sure, but it looks terrible to outsiders and bug triage is a perfect place for new employees (junior developers, QA, and support staff) to get their feet wet while they still lack the emotional attachment...it's the perfect bootcamp. The stats on this would be fascinating, too - for instance, I'd love to know the percentage of dupes. :) Conversely, making senior developers responsible for triaging bugs straight from the public (and doing first line support for some of these, which does appear to happen from time to time) can lead to some serious burnout.

zmmmmm 15y ago
The worst problem here is one of PR. Google should at least pay some nice friendly intern to sit down and go through each bug and write a "Thanks for reporting this, we appreciate your time and I'll try and get the right person to look at it" type comment, with periodic, "Sorry there's been no progress on this, we're really busy as you can understand" - totally meaningless, but costs almost nothing and completely changes the feel of the discussion. Obviously they should do much better, but a token PR effort would be a nice minimum.