3 ms·

I keep a few screenshots of such hilarious occurrences. One of my favorite one is a list of stock prices on a website where something had gone wrong and numbers

I keep a few screenshots of such hilarious occurrences. One of my favorite one is a list of stock prices on a website where something had gone wrong and numbers were all in the thousands of trillions of USD. For a split second before my morning coffee I wondered if the world had just experienced hyper-inflation overnight. The bug only lasted a few minutes but it was "cool". Now the thing is: safety checks and then what? Because basically such safety checks are only really useful for developers and, arguably, should be stuff present in some kind of tests. What can the UI do? Not show any estimate when the numbers would be nonsensical? Another wonderful screenshot I have is some old MS software where something failed and it tells me one of the reason it failed may be because "your computer is turned off". I mean: it was literally using that very same computer to tell me, in a pop-up, that my computer could be off. Fun stuff but I wouldn't sleep (or write a blog) about it: a comment on HN at most ; )

xg15 3y ago
> What can the UI do? Not show any estimate when the numbers would be nonsensical? Yes, exactly that. Also, log a warning and, if possible, add the warning to outgoing telemetry. Sure, in theory such a situation should never happen because everything was already caught in tests. In theory, our software should also be 100% bug-free. However, because that's not how the world works, it's polite to the user (and makes a better impression) to detect such output and correct for it. You have the same situation with websites showing NaN in the UI: The website didn't catch it, because the variable is never supposed to be NaN - yet, for some reason it was here and the result was causing frustration for the user.
- pixl97 3y ago
  How many checks do you need for each language/locale that has very different displays for their local monitary denomination?
pixl97 3y ago
>were all in the thousands of trillions of USD It was just trying to show Zimbabwe bucks instead of USD.

xg15 3y ago

> What can the UI do? Not show any estimate when the numbers would be nonsensical? Yes, exactly that. Also, log a warning and, if possible, add the warning to outgoing telemetry. Sure, in theory such a situation should never happen because everything was already caught in tests. In theory, our software should also be 100% bug-free. However, because that's not how the world works, it's polite to the user (and makes a better impression) to detect such output and correct for it. You have the same situation with websites showing NaN in the UI: The website didn't catch it, because the variable is never supposed to be NaN - yet, for some reason it was here and the result was causing frustration for the user.

pixl97 3y ago
How many checks do you need for each language/locale that has very different displays for their local monitary denomination?

pixl97 3y ago

>were all in the thousands of trillions of USD It was just trying to show Zimbabwe bucks instead of USD.