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Chromium has 63,438 open bugs in its bug tracker so the theory remains true, but maybe the broader point is that strong abstractions have enabled us to reach gr

Chromium has 63,438 open bugs in its bug tracker so the theory remains true, but maybe the broader point is that strong abstractions have enabled us to reach great levels of complexity. Testing, staffing, and programming best practices probably go a long way in making software like Chrome appear to work flawlessly from the outside. An analogy would be the craftsman-factory. A craftsman knows and performs every step of the process, and the end product depends on the skill of the craftsman. While a factory each worker is limited to a specific job and the combined effort of factory workers allows products well beyond the reach of any craftsman.

johnfn 4y ago
> Chromium has 63,438 open bugs in its bug tracker so the theory remains true How many of those bugs affect you on a day-to-day basis? For me, the answer is 0. In fact, I can only think of one time ever when I was affected by a browser bug as a developer. I think that most of the reason Chrome has so many bugs is probably just because a staggering amount of people use Chrome, meaning they can inspect every nook and cranny. For a somewhat contrived example, imagine I write a program to add two numbers together. I write a single line of code: `var foo = bar + baz;` in JavaScript. If I ship it to no one, I can claim it has no bugs. But if I ship it to a million people, then I might start getting bug reports from people running it under extremely precise circumstances and running into issues. For instance, maybe I'd get a bug where two numbers sum to be negative because the user ran into integer overflow when bar and baz are very close to INT_MAX. I might also get reports of lack of precision when bar is extremely large and baz is not (e.g. sometimes foo + 1 === foo in JS if a is huge). I suspect most bugs in Chrome are of this variety, or, more likely, they are even more obscure. It seems to me that it's not a strict 1:1 correlation between size and quality - there's also a factor where more popular software has a lot more people looking for bugs.
- cxr 4y ago
  > e.g. sometimes foo + 1 === foo in JS if a is huge Superfluous use of the strict equality check there. An ordinary comparison (i.e. using `==` aka "double equals") is sufficient.
  - johnfn 4y ago
    How do you know that foo isn't a numerical string?
    - cxr 4y ago
      Because I'm responding to the scenario you actually laid out, not counterfactuals.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- unsafecast 4y ago
  https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list The majority of the bugs I see are failed tests, null dereferences, unreachable code reached, very slow code, UI bugs, crashes, etc. Come to think of it, I've had 2 chrome bugs on my phone in the last week or so. Some weird UI bug with tabs, and a more severe one where it just kept crashing once in like 10 seconds. It magically stopped after a while.
tonnydourado 4y ago
Things like chrome, or Linux, are so complex, and interact with so many different variables that it's completely understandable that it can have tens of thousands of bugs, and yet most people won't ever notice one.

johnfn 4y ago

> Chromium has 63,438 open bugs in its bug tracker so the theory remains true How many of those bugs affect you on a day-to-day basis? For me, the answer is 0. In fact, I can only think of one time ever when I was affected by a browser bug as a developer. I think that most of the reason Chrome has so many bugs is probably just because a staggering amount of people use Chrome, meaning they can inspect every nook and cranny. For a somewhat contrived example, imagine I write a program to add two numbers together. I write a single line of code: `var foo = bar + baz;` in JavaScript. If I ship it to no one, I can claim it has no bugs. But if I ship it to a million people, then I might start getting bug reports from people running it under extremely precise circumstances and running into issues. For instance, maybe I'd get a bug where two numbers sum to be negative because the user ran into integer overflow when bar and baz are very close to INT_MAX. I might also get reports of lack of precision when bar is extremely large and baz is not (e.g. sometimes foo + 1 === foo in JS if a is huge). I suspect most bugs in Chrome are of this variety, or, more likely, they are even more obscure. It seems to me that it's not a strict 1:1 correlation between size and quality - there's also a factor where more popular software has a lot more people looking for bugs.

cxr 4y ago
> e.g. sometimes foo + 1 === foo in JS if a is huge Superfluous use of the strict equality check there. An ordinary comparison (i.e. using `==` aka "double equals") is sufficient.
- johnfn 4y ago
  How do you know that foo isn't a numerical string?
  - cxr 4y ago
    Because I'm responding to the scenario you actually laid out, not counterfactuals.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
unsafecast 4y ago
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list The majority of the bugs I see are failed tests, null dereferences, unreachable code reached, very slow code, UI bugs, crashes, etc. Come to think of it, I've had 2 chrome bugs on my phone in the last week or so. Some weird UI bug with tabs, and a more severe one where it just kept crashing once in like 10 seconds. It magically stopped after a while.

tonnydourado 4y ago

Things like chrome, or Linux, are so complex, and interact with so many different variables that it's completely understandable that it can have tens of thousands of bugs, and yet most people won't ever notice one.