3 ms·

I 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 w

by ozim 3y ago

I 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 ago
That'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!
- 59nadir 3y ago
  > I am glad that you've embraced a more neutral mindset, though! Putting on the proverbial blinders and declaring software "better now" is not really something I'd consider neutral, to be honest. Sounds like expectations dropping over time, more than anything. Note how there are plenty of real examples of outright bugs that are left unaddressed here and no acknowledgement that yes, the world of software is full of them. I don't particularly care whether someone has a rosy outlook in general, but it's pretty odd to declare that software is somehow so good when it's at the very least as bad as it was in the early noughts. It's understandable that people don't like overly pessimistic people dooming and glooming too much but I find the inverse equally if not more annoying. If you factor in how much slower most software experiences are vs. what our hardware should achieve plus all of the bugs that are at least as plentiful if not more our general software output is much, much worse than it ever was. We're not even producing it much faster because of galactic scale overcomplication in software stacks as well.

by ozim 3y ago

KronisLV 3y ago

That'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!

59nadir 3y ago
> I am glad that you've embraced a more neutral mindset, though! Putting on the proverbial blinders and declaring software "better now" is not really something I'd consider neutral, to be honest. Sounds like expectations dropping over time, more than anything. Note how there are plenty of real examples of outright bugs that are left unaddressed here and no acknowledgement that yes, the world of software is full of them. I don't particularly care whether someone has a rosy outlook in general, but it's pretty odd to declare that software is somehow so good when it's at the very least as bad as it was in the early noughts. It's understandable that people don't like overly pessimistic people dooming and glooming too much but I find the inverse equally if not more annoying. If you factor in how much slower most software experiences are vs. what our hardware should achieve plus all of the bugs that are at least as plentiful if not more our general software output is much, much worse than it ever was. We're not even producing it much faster because of galactic scale overcomplication in software stacks as well.