5 ms·

Wow. Seriously? Learn to code.

67726e 13y ago
How is that constructive at all? Shit happens. My code has bugs, your code has bugs. Just about everyone has something break at some point. At least Twilio has some reasonable disclosure of these issues on their dashboard to inform people of what is going on. I'm sure they will rectify the issue as soon as they have everything back up and running.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  That is why companies should be made accountable for software errors, just like most industries.
  - peterjancelis 13y ago
    How about we just stick to what we have (freedom of contract) and solve disputes according to the terms and conditions we agreed on, maybe with some PR gestures on top. Imagine a world where Saas vendors would be liable for economic loss their software bugs generated. You'd have to fill in a huge questionnaire to sign up and everybody would be paying a tailored, very high price to cover all the risks. Every software vendor would be in the insurance business.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      As someone once putted, "the software industry is like buying shoes that explode when you try them on". We only get away with things like outsourcing, low quality work full of bugs, side jumpers into the industry, weekend developers, because no one is held accountable for software bugs and their consequences. The only place people seem to care is when people life's are at risk, and even then we know how Therac-25 went out.
- nkozyra 13y ago
  Your code has bugs, my code has bugs, but when our organization fails to implement a system to effectively catch bugs - particularly catastrophic ones - it's a bit dismissive to throw a "shit happens" at it.
h2s 13y ago
Doesn't matter how good you think are. If you write code professionally for long enough, you eventually experience an event like this first hand. It's an absolutely horrible experience for a developer.
- oconnore 13y ago
  Being a professional developer is hard. That's why it's generally a high paying position, because you solve hard problems and are accountable for the results. So stop making excuses. An organization of this scale should be taking serious precautions (against code errors, bad hardware, malicious attacks, network problems, compiler bugs, cosmic ray induced bit errors, etc.) when building a credit card processor. If something truly extraordinary comes out to justify this problem, I may be sympathetic. But Occams razor suggests this was avoidable (through good process, not "I should have seen that off by one error").
  - sp332 13y ago
    But robobrobro claimed they didn't know how to code, which is a completely different thing.
  - cunac 13y ago
    I would think NASA has even more controls in place and still shit happens. All problems are avoidable in hindsight but it is inevitable that you will have problem at some point.
- easytiger 13y ago
  I work in banking and when a piece of our code went down due to failing to handle load correctly during a market announcement the business was able to say they lost, in that 7 minute period ~£90k.
free652 13y ago
Well actually learn to write test cases and review code. Though even with that it's feasible to miss a bug.
- 300bps 13y ago
  Especially when the bug very feasibly might not be in your system. In this case, Twilio is obviously calling out to a billing provider of some sort. I've run into situations myself where the billing provider returns a status message equivalent to "failure" when it actually was successful. In that case, many billing systems will try again thereby double-billing or worse.

How is that constructive at all? Shit happens. My code has bugs, your code has bugs. Just about everyone has something break at some point. At least Twilio has some reasonable disclosure of these issues on their dashboard to inform people of what is going on. I'm sure they will rectify the issue as soon as they have everything back up and running.

pjmlp 13y ago
That is why companies should be made accountable for software errors, just like most industries.
- peterjancelis 13y ago
  How about we just stick to what we have (freedom of contract) and solve disputes according to the terms and conditions we agreed on, maybe with some PR gestures on top. Imagine a world where Saas vendors would be liable for economic loss their software bugs generated. You'd have to fill in a huge questionnaire to sign up and everybody would be paying a tailored, very high price to cover all the risks. Every software vendor would be in the insurance business.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    As someone once putted, "the software industry is like buying shoes that explode when you try them on". We only get away with things like outsourcing, low quality work full of bugs, side jumpers into the industry, weekend developers, because no one is held accountable for software bugs and their consequences. The only place people seem to care is when people life's are at risk, and even then we know how Therac-25 went out.
nkozyra 13y ago
Your code has bugs, my code has bugs, but when our organization fails to implement a system to effectively catch bugs - particularly catastrophic ones - it's a bit dismissive to throw a "shit happens" at it.

h2s 13y ago

Doesn't matter how good you think are. If you write code professionally for long enough, you eventually experience an event like this first hand. It's an absolutely horrible experience for a developer.

oconnore 13y ago
Being a professional developer is hard. That's why it's generally a high paying position, because you solve hard problems and are accountable for the results. So stop making excuses. An organization of this scale should be taking serious precautions (against code errors, bad hardware, malicious attacks, network problems, compiler bugs, cosmic ray induced bit errors, etc.) when building a credit card processor. If something truly extraordinary comes out to justify this problem, I may be sympathetic. But Occams razor suggests this was avoidable (through good process, not "I should have seen that off by one error").
- sp332 13y ago
  But robobrobro claimed they didn't know how to code, which is a completely different thing.
- cunac 13y ago
  I would think NASA has even more controls in place and still shit happens. All problems are avoidable in hindsight but it is inevitable that you will have problem at some point.
easytiger 13y ago
I work in banking and when a piece of our code went down due to failing to handle load correctly during a market announcement the business was able to say they lost, in that 7 minute period ~£90k.

free652 13y ago

Well actually learn to write test cases and review code. Though even with that it's feasible to miss a bug.

300bps 13y ago
Especially when the bug very feasibly might not be in your system. In this case, Twilio is obviously calling out to a billing provider of some sort. I've run into situations myself where the billing provider returns a status message equivalent to "failure" when it actually was successful. In that case, many billing systems will try again thereby double-billing or worse.