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> What software are you using and what were last 10 frustrating bugs you encountered? I actually tried writing a section of my blog called "Everything is Broke
by KronisLV 3y ago
> What software are you using and what were last 10 frustrating bugs you encountered?
I actually tried writing a section of my blog called "Everything is Broken" to cover some of the ways software breaks in (as well as some issues in general): https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken
Unfortunately, there are so many bugs out there, that I only write about the things that are annoying enough to push my hand. Some of the last things that happened to me:
* Ubuntu LTS updates broke my GPU drivers, preventing the server from starting up (among other things)
* Debian updates made some unnecessary piece of software start listening on port 25, thus breaking my mailserver in Docker
* OpenProject packaged PostgreSQL inside of a single container, except that didn't bother setting up automatic data migration for new major version
* Vector maps are somehow way more laggy than raster tile based maps, horrible user experience on mobile for me (video included)
* a trailing comma in Visual Studio Code configuration file made fonts end up being non-monospaced
* Kdenlive (probably due to ffmpeg) failed to correctly apply text titles on top of a video at the correct times
* containers break due to different file system permission models on Window and Linux, bind mounted files have incorrect line endings
* Nginx crashes the entire web server if something like 1 out of 20 reverse proxied domains doesn't have a successful DNS lookup on startup
* Grav (blogging software) can have changes be made to the install without admin authorization, my blog got vandalized
* Oracle database randomly dropped connections, some relation to a generated column
I've also had issues with GRUB, disk management in Linux, Nextcloud, Libre Office, OpenCV, Docker Swarm and pretty much every class of software (desktop, web, CLI tools, GUI stuff, OS components) out there - sometimes in pretty exciting ways of them breaking!
I also have a folder on my computer where I collect screenshots of software breaking out in the wild, currently it has 143 images, though perhaps that's a bit too much for blog posts. Currently the last 10 there are:
* Mozilla Observatory failing to analyze my site due to their own CSP being broken (script-src)
* PHP install failing because the ondrej/ubuntu PPA failing to work like it should
* my bank login page having an untranslated text string for one of the options: #xml-dtd.LOGIN-TEXTS.LOGINEPARAKSTS
* my mobile service provider telling me that I've used 212166% of my mobile data
* me being unable to modify a Visual Studio Build Tools install locally because they want to update their installer but I'm offline
* Windows 11 Explorer breaking the file path bar and showing me two overlapping text strings for some reason
* Oracle not giving me my OCA cert because my name contains non-ASCII symbols
* the War Thunder game telling me that I have 2147483647 crew available for my tank
* OpenProject functionality to move multiple issues failing... despite them having a dialog exactly for that
* installing a Ruby Gem following official SQLite instructions results in UDS:Trojan-Downloader.Win64.Alien.eg/ef being detected
Aside from that, perhaps my favorite bug is this: https://i.imgur.com/97wu8j5.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/97wu8j5.jpeg
- ozim 3y agoI see here bunch of: - not really a bug, just system was not build to support scenario - not really a bug, user does not understand system thinks it should work differently - not really a bug, combination of 2 or more software things that have no way of knowing about each other - not really a bug, because it does not affect me in any meaningful way There are some I can agree are bugs of course. Though I see I am getting older and much more humble and lenient. For humble it is that if I expect some software to work some way and it does not, I step back and really go back to understanding documentation and what it all means. I don't call out things "fail to work like it should" (which of course might be my issue and parent poster might be right calling it out). Then for lenient, I just don't care about labels, text misalignment etc. The same with expecting non-ASCII symbols being supported, yeah we have UTF for quite some time, but it is also not something trivial to switch to and company most likely has loads of other work to be done. In the end world is not about me and there are tons of users who have other issues and my edge cases are not affecting enough people. World is much bigger so to say. If it does not affect me in any meaningful way I just move on.
- KronisLV 3y agoThat's a very fair point, that's why I had to mention the whole "(as well as some issues in general)" thing as well. For example, if software works in a configuration that was setup correctly (according to their own instructions) in version #1 and after update the version #2 makes the setup no longer work, is that a bug? I'd probably say it is, unless the patch notes clearly instruct that something needs to be done, though even that can be debatable. What about the case where you don't even consent to install some package that will take up a port on your OS and break something else, but it silently gets pulled in through some update? There's probably nuance to it all. At the end of the day, as a user, I might subjectively not even care about the internal workings behind some abstraction and the many reasons behind it, but rather about how it should work in a reasonable configuration - if a web server refuses to start if it cannot resolve a domain that it's supposed to reverse proxy when starting up, even though the other 19 out of 20 could be proxied, is that a bug? Probably not, but it sure seems pretty darn broken, since those 19 could be served and the faulty domain simply checked later. Of course, the software itself doesn't care about the user either, so at the end of the day it is the user who needs to learn patience and to trudge through the docs, posts online and other sources to hopefully resolve the issues, even if it's a bunch of weird workarounds or concessions, no matter how frustrating they might be. But hey, there's nothing wrong with documenting said frustrations or issues. I am glad that you've embraced a more neutral mindset, though!