3 ms·

> What about regression testing, anway? > My feeling is that Microsoft, and other companies too, have relied far too heavily on their beta testers to identify

by toast0 1y ago

> What about regression testing, anway? > My feeling is that Microsoft, and other companies too, have relied far too heavily on their beta testers to identify bugs. They expected problems to be surfaced by telemetry and user reports, which are less effort than actual testing. Microsoft used to be better at this (although bugs still escaped regularly), but in 2014, they eliminated the software developer in test role, and software developers roles were supposed to make up the difference. IMHO, there has been an obvious slump in quality since then. Also, the problem with relying on user bug reports, is when it's clear you're not listening to users, users stop providing bug reports. I've been to microsoft user forums and seen long discussion threads where many people have an issue and there's no follow up from Microsoft. When you direct issues to that kind of forum and don't respond there, that's a sign that says you don't care, don't bother to report things.

dwringer 1y ago
On those forums, it's not just that there'd be no follow up; in my experience there'd typically be someone with a username marked as a "Community MVP" who would paste long walls of generic troubleshooting text for 2 or 3 replies insisting that the user go through a long list of steps that usually seem not to resolve anything (or indeed introduce additional variables and problems), often including completely irrelevant suggestions that seem to indicate the user's report was not actually read in its entirety to begin with.
- anonymars 1y ago
  Don't forget that they need to spend a few sentences in the lede describing that they're a 50x MVP who is happy to help and make sure to upvote the answer because otherwise they won't be a 51x MVP Like, can I please go back to paying for Windows again so you can afford to not make it such a piece of crap? I know the tech elite always sneered at MS/Windows but trust me, it wasn't this bad.
- RedShift1 1y ago
  Please run sfc /scannow and try again
  - toast0 1y ago
    Ok well, rant time. The forum stuff yeah ok. But why do I have to run the scan? Why doesn't it run automatically in the background. What happened that lead to whatever it's fixing... is the telemetry working??? I also find it amazing when the windows store manages to end up broken and need to be reinstalled... Why doesn't it fix itself? And what with all the signature verification stuff, why doesn't whatever is corrupting the files not fail the signature check. Thanks for reading my newsletter.
    - qcnguy 1y ago
      Windows power users are sometimes their own worst enemy. The top cause of broken Windows Update or Windows Stores is in my experience people either running malware as part of pirating stuff (it's not zero-daying their browser), which then nukes the background services needed for Windows Store/Update to work. Or they deliberately run scripts that stop Windows updating because they find it annoying not realizing that they corrupted their system by doing so. Or they do other things that break Windows like changing the permissions on c:\Program Files\WindowsApps which is meant to be private and managed only by the OS, but power users hate that idea so they mess with it and then things break. Windows shouldn't allow itself to be reconfigured in ways that let users deliberately break it, but ultimately it's just software and can't stop users fucking with its internals if they try hard enough. On macOS things are much better. Apple transitioned to immutable system images and de-powered the root user a long time ago. They also managed to create a culture where even power users recognize that SIP is good for security and don't turn it off so there's way less of a culture of random hacks. Their security is way better as a whole so there's less malware and it's less invasive. And their OS engineers are just better so they don't tend to ship updates that botch stuff like Microsoft do. Easy example: disable the Windows license check background service, and the Security app no longer opens. There's no error message, just nothing happens at all when you click it. Why does Microsoft allow users to do this? Well the whole OS is just in maintenance mode due to tech debt bankruptcy so fixing anything has become nearly impossible, let alone the kinds of huge moves Apple has made.
not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
> in 2014, they eliminated the software developer in test role, and software developers roles were supposed to make up the difference Unfortunately, this was a widespread industry trend
- jonbiggums22 1y ago
  I remember a Yahoo article where they supported getting rid of their testers as the metrics showed the number of new bugs was greatly reduced after. It left me wondering why they were paying those testers to put the bugs in the software in the first place.
  - not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
    Wow, that's not unlike the contemporary decommissioning of systems to monitor air pollution. Some people are just natural problem solvers

by toast0 1y ago

dwringer 1y ago

On those forums, it's not just that there'd be no follow up; in my experience there'd typically be someone with a username marked as a "Community MVP" who would paste long walls of generic troubleshooting text for 2 or 3 replies insisting that the user go through a long list of steps that usually seem not to resolve anything (or indeed introduce additional variables and problems), often including completely irrelevant suggestions that seem to indicate the user's report was not actually read in its entirety to begin with.

anonymars 1y ago
Don't forget that they need to spend a few sentences in the lede describing that they're a 50x MVP who is happy to help and make sure to upvote the answer because otherwise they won't be a 51x MVP Like, can I please go back to paying for Windows again so you can afford to not make it such a piece of crap? I know the tech elite always sneered at MS/Windows but trust me, it wasn't this bad.
RedShift1 1y ago
Please run sfc /scannow and try again
- toast0 1y ago
  Ok well, rant time. The forum stuff yeah ok. But why do I have to run the scan? Why doesn't it run automatically in the background. What happened that lead to whatever it's fixing... is the telemetry working??? I also find it amazing when the windows store manages to end up broken and need to be reinstalled... Why doesn't it fix itself? And what with all the signature verification stuff, why doesn't whatever is corrupting the files not fail the signature check. Thanks for reading my newsletter.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    Windows power users are sometimes their own worst enemy. The top cause of broken Windows Update or Windows Stores is in my experience people either running malware as part of pirating stuff (it's not zero-daying their browser), which then nukes the background services needed for Windows Store/Update to work. Or they deliberately run scripts that stop Windows updating because they find it annoying not realizing that they corrupted their system by doing so. Or they do other things that break Windows like changing the permissions on c:\Program Files\WindowsApps which is meant to be private and managed only by the OS, but power users hate that idea so they mess with it and then things break. Windows shouldn't allow itself to be reconfigured in ways that let users deliberately break it, but ultimately it's just software and can't stop users fucking with its internals if they try hard enough. On macOS things are much better. Apple transitioned to immutable system images and de-powered the root user a long time ago. They also managed to create a culture where even power users recognize that SIP is good for security and don't turn it off so there's way less of a culture of random hacks. Their security is way better as a whole so there's less malware and it's less invasive. And their OS engineers are just better so they don't tend to ship updates that botch stuff like Microsoft do. Easy example: disable the Windows license check background service, and the Security app no longer opens. There's no error message, just nothing happens at all when you click it. Why does Microsoft allow users to do this? Well the whole OS is just in maintenance mode due to tech debt bankruptcy so fixing anything has become nearly impossible, let alone the kinds of huge moves Apple has made.

not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago

> in 2014, they eliminated the software developer in test role, and software developers roles were supposed to make up the difference Unfortunately, this was a widespread industry trend

jonbiggums22 1y ago
I remember a Yahoo article where they supported getting rid of their testers as the metrics showed the number of new bugs was greatly reduced after. It left me wondering why they were paying those testers to put the bugs in the software in the first place.
- not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago
  Wow, that's not unlike the contemporary decommissioning of systems to monitor air pollution. Some people are just natural problem solvers