How to Report a Bug to Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#101

Post by bboreham » Sat, May 27, 2017, 1:52 PM UTC

badminton1 wrote: post #15

"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run". - Microsoft The reason you are all using MS Excel today.

Nah; Lotus got very defocused on new C++ and cross-platform spreadsheets. Maybe Microsoft misled them on the relative importance of OS/2 vs Windows, but to my eyes it was a classic case of too much money leading to a focus on abstract high-level issues leading to bad software.

Still, it took years for 123 to really fade away, at which point Lotus was all about Notes.

Source: I worked on the X (Open Look and Motif) versions of 123 around 1990-1992.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#102

Post by badminton1 » Sat, May 27, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

bboreham wrote: post #101

badminton1 wrote: post #15

"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run". - Microsoft The reason you are all using MS Excel today.

Nah; Lotus got very defocused on new C++ and cross-platform spreadsheets. Maybe Microsoft misled them on the relative importance of OS/2 vs Windows, but to my eyes it was a classic case of too much money leading to a focus on abstract high-level issues leading to bad software. Still, it took years for 123 to really fade away, at which point Lotus was all about Notes. Source: I worked on the X (Open Look and Motif) ve…

What are your thoughts on Quattro Pro?

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#103

Post by a_humean » Sat, May 27, 2017, 2:07 PM UTC

oblosys wrote: post #27

There are also Microsoft teams that don't put you through such nightmare scenarios though. Last night I submitted a TypeScript bug report, and within 15 minutes it was labeled, added to the next-release milestone, and had someone assigned to it.

Yeah, but who are the users of Typescript? Developers that, by and large, can usually tell the different between a genuine bug and analogous cases of not understanding where the FILE button is. The signal:noise ratio for reported typescript problems is certainly such that its much easier to filter through the issue tracker and find the genuine bugs.

People use github issues as tech support quite often, but the users of excel are nothing like users of Typescript.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#104

Post by bboreham » Sat, May 27, 2017, 2:14 PM UTC

badminton1 wrote: post #102

bboreham wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah; Lotus got very defocused on new C++ and cross-platform spreadsheets. Maybe Microsoft misled them on the relative importance of OS/2 vs Windows, but to my eyes it was a classic case of too much money leading to a focus on abstract high-level issues leading to bad software. Still, it took years for 123 to really fade away, at which point Lotus was all about Notes. Source: I worked on the X (Open Look and Motif) ve…

What are your thoughts on Quattro Pro?

I don't believe I've ever set eyes on it running.

Kudos to the team that got it to work, though: at the time it was probably the biggest C++ PC program ever.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#105

Post by redm » Sat, May 27, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

I've had the same experience, with Comcast... What these companies don't understand is that good CS can make a customer for life, or the opposite.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#106

Post by thr0waway1239 » Sat, May 27, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #28

mherdeg wrote: post #7

Ouch, sounds like this author used a long phone tree and talked to about ten front-line phone support technicians, none of whom were able to file a bug report. Bummer. Also sounds like one or more of those people advised him to report his issue in the web support forums at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_... , which in my experience often get really good feedback from employees and expert…

> I remember that MVPs and PMs would absolutely trawl those forums looking for user-reported bugs and trying to help get them workarounds & fix the root-cause bug. YMMV of course, but many members of the team spent time every week looking for primary-source user feedback. Oh bullshit. Anyone who's landed on answers.microsoft.com before and seen what passes for "dialogue" with customers on there knows what you're sayi…

Oh, come on! Why did you have to ruin the fun? Don't you know we can have a ton of fun chuckling sarcastically to ourselves when we see folks like GP keep making these kind of shockingly delusional statements?

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#107

Post by smueller1234 » Sat, May 27, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

mhermher wrote: post #71

mistermann wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is controlled by its shareholders, not by its employees. It is controlled by management, shareholders don't have any input, especially at this level of detail. Employees I think NOW (in some divisions) have input, but it is still in pockets. Ask yourself this: do you think Scott Hanselman happiness level with the "new Microsoft" is better/worse/unchanged? NOTE: It's really interesting to see how much public perc…

It's being downvoted because it is really mean spirited, in case it wasn't obvious to you. You know there are MS engineers reading this thread, and your comment is essentially shitting on them and saying that they don't have any pride in their work. It's one thing to shit on management or whatever, but your comment reads at least in part as a very serious dig at the actual employees. And it's just a really shitty thi…

Erm. This may be a nitpick, but managers are people and as such we have actual, real feelings.

Ironically, a good manager will generally have a pretty solid amount of empathy because that's key to being good at the job. So if it's not okay to crap on engineers (it's not) then it's also not okay to crap on managers.

NB: not affiliated with Microsoft. Edit: Freudian slip.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#108

Post by doggydogs94 » Sat, May 27, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

At level 7 you lost. They got you off the phone. I usually allocate a half a day to these types of efforts. Hopefully I am not overly critical, but it appears you have spent much more time complaining about the MS support process than just biting the bullet and spending the whole day on the phone.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#109

Post by mattnewport » Sat, May 27, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

I didn't follow the part where you couldn't give them a Microsoft id for a commercial office 365 license. Presumably you were giving them your personal Microsoft id used with office 365 home at home for your own personal non commercial use? Why did you not just give them the id for the commercial office license your company must have to use office for commercial purposes?

It's understandable that one of the differences with the greatly discounted non commercial use office home license is lesser support than the more expensive commercial license is entitled to. Support is expensive.

Re: How to Report a Bug to Microsoft

#110

Post by mystere » Sat, May 27, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #20

First, I think it's good that Microsoft and others separate tech support from bug reporting . Obviously some support requests will be due to bugs - but I'd never ever try to enter a bug via tech support (and this article shows why). That said, the Microsoft way of bug reporting is utterly infuriating. If a bug like this is reported you want a human response from a developer familiar with the code in question, within…

The problem here is that historically, bug reporting was linked to tech support because only enterprise customers were expected to report bugs, and those customers were paying for those bugs to be resolved (hotfixes, for instance).

Nowadays, Microsoft is asking for bug reports from everyone, but has not fully created a support structure to make that feasible at scale. They seem to be iterating over the problem though, and maybe eventually they'll get it right.