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Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

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Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#61

Post by solutionyogi »

skrebbel wrote: post #27

A bit off topic, and I know I'm sounding like a condescending jerk here but I mean it: but why do people love bugs so much that they want to purchase an entire database program to track them? I mean, if you have more than 10 bugs that are highly important to keep track of, it seems to me that you have much larger problem than whether to purchase JIRA or FogBugz. I mean, either a bug is important to you so prioritize…

What's your development experience? I am guessing that you haven't worked on line of business applications for big companies which takes years to develop.

I think it's a mistake to think that Jira and FogBugz are only used for tracking 'bugs'. They are obviously used for that but everyone I know uses them to track everything related to their software. Track features/support questions/infrastructure changes etc.

To give you an example, I am part of 50+ developer team implementing straight through processing for a large hedge fund. This involves developing variety of systems which are highly dependent on each other. Jira tells me that I have 120 items which I need to implement by this year end. Mind you, this is just one system. There are at least 10 more systems like that. I can confidently say that there at least 1000 items in our overall list which we need to work on. You absolutely need a tool like FogBugz or Jira to track them properly.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#62

Post by itsybitsycoder »

nobleach wrote: post #45
peterdkovacs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got more than 10 bugs. You just don't know it yet. But really, "bug tracker" is just a colloquial expression for the more accurate "issue tracker" which can definitely include things like improvements, new features, A/B tests you want to run, etc.

It is possible that their software isn't large enough to have 10 bugs... they could be implementing FizzBuzz.

Where can one get a job as a professional FizzBuzz developer?

I think if a program is big enough to devote a software developer to it full-time, it's going to have at least 10 bugs. Maybe they are small or unimportant or so obscure that none of the users actually run into it, but they're in there somewhere.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#63

Post by buro9 »

skrebbel wrote: post #20
Domenic_S wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever designed JIRA's psuedo-markdown text format deserves a special place in hell.

The relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/277/

Every JIRA product has it's own special markup.

I can never remember how to write code into comments or titles. It literally changes from product to product and yet all of the products orchestrate together so that if you do happen to use Stash, JIRA, Wiki, etc all together, then you encounter as many different markup languages as there are Atlassian products.

It really is hellish.

I hope there's some good reason why they can't provide one "comment markup" language to all applications.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#64

Post by mpdehaan2 »

solutionyogi wrote: post #29

Having mainly done line of business applications my entire life, I have a slightly different take. Jira won because it was not opinionated. You can use it however you want. FogBugz had the philosophy to make bug entry super easy above anything else. Jira will let a manager define new custom fields and make them all compulsory. It perfectly fits how manager at big companies think. FogBugz provides Completion Date Prob…

I will agree that "intelligent" time tracking features in FogBuz ~4 years ago seemed relatively flaky and random.

JIRA's benefits are likely in customization - which is a giant pain for managers in some ways, but it's nice that it can do it, but JIRA is supremely frustrating when editing dashboards. Every time somebody changed a component name, it would break all the underlying queries, etc.

I think there's a huge market for someone to overtake JIRA because it's so unfriendly, and I was very happy for various projects that had a team scope small enough to use Trello, but with better searching and a few more (optional) controls on top or something.

Since there's common DNA there, I think Trello could evolve to be that. I hope it can.

(BTW, I'm also nostalgic a tiny tiny amount for the end-user usability of Trac.)

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#65

Post by UK-AL »

skrebbel wrote: post #27

A bit off topic, and I know I'm sounding like a condescending jerk here but I mean it: but why do people love bugs so much that they want to purchase an entire database program to track them? I mean, if you have more than 10 bugs that are highly important to keep track of, it seems to me that you have much larger problem than whether to purchase JIRA or FogBugz. I mean, either a bug is important to you so prioritize…

Theres not really "bug trackers", there issue trackers. All the micro tasks are created, organised and tracked though to completion. Often visually represented on a kanban board.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#66

Post by jo909 »

skrebbel wrote: post #27

A bit off topic, and I know I'm sounding like a condescending jerk here but I mean it: but why do people love bugs so much that they want to purchase an entire database program to track them? I mean, if you have more than 10 bugs that are highly important to keep track of, it seems to me that you have much larger problem than whether to purchase JIRA or FogBugz. I mean, either a bug is important to you so prioritize…

In the end its just project management. I want to keep track of the things that still need to be worked on, so I don't forget them. I can delegate work, others can delegate work to me, work that requires other work or sub-steps can be passed around multiple people. The work can be described in detail, more input can be gathered, actions that were taken logged for future reference.

All of that can be achived in many many different ways of course, but software based ticket systems can work quite well in my opinion.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#67

Post by alexwebb2 »

Slightly off topic here but since everyone's chiming in about their experiences with bug trackers, I figure somebody might find it useful.

I did a pretty intensive search involving trials of a couple dozen trackers about two years ago when we decided to ditch Jira due to some serious performance and UI issues. I tested pretty much every serious contender on the market.

I ended up going with YouTrack and it's been pretty fantastic. One of those by-developers, for-developers things with a lot of functionality out of the box and a decent API for more advanced stuff, and most importantly it has very good performance and a sane UI. It does what it's supposed to do and then gets out of the way, which is exactly what I wanted. I recommend taking it for a spin if you're looking for something along those lines.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#68

Post by protomyth »

Wasbi had nothing to do with it. JIRA caters to micro-managing mangers and FogBugz didn't. That is the simple lesson in enterprise. Trying to give a technical explanation isn't really telling the story.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#69

Post by scott_s »

JimDabell wrote: post #2

There's an interesting discussion happening on Reddit involving ex-employees of both companies: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3n2sc1/why_fog...

Very interesting. More insightful than the submitted piece, as the participants have inside knowledge and understanding of what went on.

Re: Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

#70

Post by morgante »

gaius wrote: post #55
morgante wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love JIRA and would absolutely advocate for using it over any other tracker. With just a little tweaking (30 minutes or so on a fresh install), I can have it perfectly configured to match my ideal workflow.

Have you considered the possibility that your cow-orkers hate it, and by extension, you?

Yes, I regularly contemplate the possibility that they all secretly hate me for using software which you don't like. All their appreciation and thanks for moving us over to Jira is surely a facade for their secret plot of hate.
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