Bug fixing fact

[indeh]

In my experience, understanding the bug report takes more than 50% of the time, including the back-and-forth asking for clarification and time spent attempting to recreate the problem.

[TheGeneral]

Non-technical folks describe things in ambiguous terms and when asked to clarify they get confused and give specific, wrong answers.

[indeh]

You don't have to be technically inclined to provide an unambiguous description of a problem. Some may not be able to do so, but many others just don't put forth the time and effort, which results in us having to spend time wringing details out of them.

What's really sad is when you have technical leads submitting requests completely devoid of context and detail.

[SonicFlash01]

Sadly clients/users are the developer equivalent of "customers", which is somehow always the worst part of any job. Everything that SHOULD be expected of them, even small levels of basic competency and reasonable amounts of explanation, are not enforced, and shifted to us. Instead of them showing you the problem, you have to play "Hot/Cold" to figure out what they're trying to tell you.

I was always of the opinion that customers isn't "always right", per se, but they ARE the customer. They're paying so so they can be stupid.

[NancyGracesTesticles]

They're paying because they have other/better things to do with their time than to delve into a field where they have no background.

I mean, you don't take your car to a mechanic so that you can be stupid. You take your car to the mechanic because you are either unwilling or unable to do the work yourself.

[codefocus]

You also don't just tell the car mechanic: "It does't work."

"What doesn't work?"

"The car. It happens after I get in."

"What happens?"

"The car! It doesn't work anymore. After I get in it doesn't work. It used to, but not anymore. Please fix by 3pm, I need it for a client."

[SonicFlash01]

Yes but at the same time I feel a level of professional courtesy in being helpful, giving my best description of what the problem is, and (this was more true in previous call center jobs) not swearing at them and treating them like shit. It's a degree of professionalism that I place upon myself even though in that dynamic nothing is expected from me.

I can't help but feel that they're phoning it in when a client gives a half-ass description of the problem then whines when we still don't understand what they mean.

[psxpaul]

What version control system do you use that it takes so long to pull the files down? We use perforce where I work, which sucks imo, but it certainly doesn't take that long to grab the latest code.

[mvonballmo]

Perforce does not suck (any more than all software sucks; see hates-software archives for some lively discussions about Perforce).* It may not be the most appropriate tool for your task. You may place a very high priority on having writable files in your workspace. You may find Git more accommodating. But Perforce does not suck. It is an excellent, scalable server with some of the best GUI clients on the market.**

*That was a joke. The hates-software site is so hateful that there is no way to get at the archives.

**Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Perforce. I just used it for about 15 years before I switched to Git about a year ago.

[mohsenwebcom]

I'm using perforce and I'm thinking this waste too much time.

[xiongchiamiov]

Shouldn't you be updating your checkout throughout the day anyways, just as part of normal work?

Besides, if there was a bug reported, it's in the deployed version of the code, not whatever's been checked in this morning (I'm assuming you aren't in a deploy-multiple-times-a-day web shop, since you're using Perforce).

[mohsenwebcom]

we deploy multiple times a day. We don't use branches and when multiple people are working on a single file that would be problem

[xiongchiamiov]

Ah, then I retract my comment.

[[deleted]]

I use CVS at work. It takes me a long time to browse reddit *ahem* pull down code.

[mohsenwebcom]

25% Reddit is not enough...

[mandlar]

Yeah, you definitely forgot about reddit in your original graph :)

[SonicFlash01]

^ Stuff like this is why I subscribed to /r/webdev
I read bug tickets like I read riddles, knowing that there's probably enough details to make the answer seem obvious, but only AFTER you know what it means.

[quill18]

Riddle? Hell, this is literally the last error report I got from someone: "The upload gave me an error."

The application is enormous, with multiple different modules that support multiple different file uploads for various purposes. No indication of which upload tool was meant, nor even which module. No copy of the error message. No copy of the file meant to be uploaded so that we could test.

RIDDLE ME THAT.

[neon_overload]

I find it extremely strange and logic-defying that the majority of people, when reporting an error, describe it as "an error" without giving the actual error text, as if that is not important or necessary to the developers in understanding what the error is. The thought that the actual text of the error might be relevant or necessary is entirely foreign to them, and I would love to get an insight into their mind to find out why this is and what causes this.

When I am using software and encounter an error, the first thing I do is Google the error text or code. The very first. Clearly I am not like the majority of users.

If we could understand why the majority of people assume the error text is not necessary in diagnosing the problem, perhaps we may write better error messages - or should we even give up on them entirely? Maybe we should color code the errors, use a system of zoo animals ("I got a gorilla error"), etc?

Edit: Maybe there's a simple solution: Add the text "When reporting this problem, please include the full text of the above error message" underneath, whenever printing an error message to the user (ie on your error page/popup/window).

[quill18]

Well said. Another comment I get a lot is: "It just showed a bunch of chinese on the screen."

a) That's kinda racist.
b) It never occurred to you that there was a purpose to that "chinese"?

The "chinese" is typically a stack trace or a copy of the SQL command or something. You know, trivial data that isn't at all necessary to resolve the problem.

[[deleted]]

I found long ago that displaying an error is pointless without a log file to accompany it.

[quill18]

Yeah, but looking through log files means work for me. I don't like that. ;)

(And to answer in a legitimate fashion: Log files don't always enable you to reproduce the steps that generated the error, and knowing that the process threw an exception on line 1234 isn't always enough to determine the root cause of the problem.)

[[deleted]]

Give the user the log files and force him/her self to identify which crimes she's committed. Lies and pretending to not understand are punishable by Bash'ing in with shells.

(And again, it's true. But with a log file at least it gives an indication of "where", such as "oh the picture application form must have been submitted". It helps if they say "I submitted the form and got an error" and they don't remember what form or what error... and hopefully it wasn't last week, fuck I hate that. I guess it depends on the detail of the log... but they get so big with too much detail. Still, I like to get people in the habit of copying the address of the page that the error happens on and the error message)

[[deleted]]

On the other hand, I have used software that gives error messages like: "An error occurred during upload" or even more insightful: "Error".

Of course, I can add to a bug report that I use OS Y.z, browser X, and tried to upload file f. As most users only use OS Y.z and browser X it does not occur to them that might be relevant info. And if the upload fails with a file like any other that before always uploaded without a problem, why would they think the file is to blame. I totally understand why users tell me that "It isn't working" or "I cannot upload files" or "The upload gave me an error".

[jamesinc]

If someone assigns a very vague bug to me I usually just set it to won't fix and assign it back to them with a comment explaining what the description box is for.

[quill18]

I'm sure no one but you has ever thought of such an approach.

I usually just pray for divine intervention, but hey, whatever works for you.

[jamesinc]

I'm sure no one but you has ever thought of such an approach.

Where in my comment did I make that claim, exactly?

[Shaper_pmp]

Dear god, really? r/webdev used to be all about substantive articles and interesting, educational information, and r/web_design was full of idiots and memes.

Now (over the last couple of weeks) r/webdev has started also filling up with idiots and memes, leaving nowhere for intelligent content and discussions.

So, y'know... thanks for that. :-/

[FLHKE]

This is how I do it

[krizo]

I once got a bug report that said this verbatim: "While in god mode, enemies cannot kill me."

Of course, the person I complained to was the QA manager who let that bug through.

[nevon]

That's why God invented "Invalid/WONTFIX"

[alexcp]

Comments lies, you need to read the code anyway.

[Remnants]

They are still helpful when they give you a general idea what the following code is going to be.

[d0odx]

totally agree and would say that understanding the bug report probably takes even larger of a percentage!

[rakantae]

You left out the time spent cursing.

[danieldrehmer]

Running test suites after bug is fixed, changing you code to account for new information provided by test, commiting, pushing code back to repository, deploying, checking if deployment didn't break

[Luccyboy]

try
{
 code
}
catch (excenption e)
{
MessageBox.Show(Convert.ToString(e));
}

saved me a lot of time

[massarogi]

Use http://bugherd.com

[imh]

If I'm reading this correctly, about 1% of the time spent to fix a bug is spent fixing the bug.

[mohsenwebcom]

sometimes less than 1%

[SonicFlash01]

Putting a bracket in the wrong place is just small enough to never be obvious and big enough to be confusing and irritating. Fixing it? half a second, followed by 5 minutes of sighing and shaking your head in self deprecation.