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We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#71

Post by spockz »

hyperrail wrote: post #47
bentcorner wrote: post #17

Sometimes I think bug tracking doesn't get enough attention. It's gotten a lot better these days but compared to source control, bug tracking seems to remain the red-headed step-child. Bugs can be just as important as source code - if a line of code is changed and all the comment says is "bug 1234", then hopefully bug 1234 has context about the scenario that was broken, a history of a conversation between QA and deve…

Fossil ( https://www.fossil-scm.org ) has an interesting approach to this problem - integrate bug and work item tracking, project wikis, and source control, but make them all distributed, so that there is not a single master copy of the bug database or the docs wiki. It attempts to solve both the cultural challenge (bugbase written by a different company/team from the source control, imposing 2 different styles on yo…

Doesn’t Gerrit (https://www.gerritcodereview.com/) do the same? At least for changes. Not sure about reporting issues.

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#72

Post by PeterStuer »

lilyball wrote: post #52
jkcorrea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you bring up a good point - the reactions are perhaps more bimodal than anything. If you're on one of the teams it was designed for, it is indeed near perfect. If not, it's far from it.

The UI was old and crufty and it was a pain in many ways to work with. But I really miss it because it’s still better than any other issue tracking system I’ve ever used.

Can you elaborate on what made/makes it better?

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#74

Post by m0zg »

RandallBrown wrote: post #63
m0zg wrote: post #12

Google's counterpart is called Buganizer. I've seen bugs in it dating back a decade or more. I don't know what, if anything, was in place before Buganizer. They might be exposing some version of it externally as well now: https://issuetracker.google.com/ , although the UI bears little resemblance with the internal version I used years ago, so it's probably a separate product. What Raymond's article does not mention (…

I remember when I first started at Microsoft, I found some bug in some product and thought "I should file a bug with them" Turns out there was no easy way to do that. I ended up emailing some person from the team I found in the GAL (I think that's what they called it?) and they weren't helpful or appreciative. Never did that again.

I don't know how it is now, but you've just described every single well-meaning starry eyed fresh Microsoft employee in the 00s and likely before. The fact that management did not see how fucked up this was is a condemnation of the Microsoft company culture of that period. Again, don't know how it is now. I turned in my blued badge well over a decade ago.

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#75

Post by jjordan »

ShamelessC wrote: post #15
airstrike wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm watching an episode of Halt and Catch Fire. Thanks for sharing!

Such a great show. I wish more people knew about it.

Never heard of it, but as a tech nerd from the 80's it sounds awesome. Will definitely check it out.

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#76

Post by OakNinja »

chadd wrote: post #2

I left MSFT and went to Viair (with folks from the MSN Mobile and Outlook Express team), and we didn't have a bug tracking system... so we had someone send us a few screenshots of RAID and built a VisualJ clone one weekend. Fun side project, didn't really want to be in the business of bug tracking, was slightly before the web app era... We called our bug tracking system "BlackFlag" because it was a competing brand of…

Fun fact, one of Sweden’s most influential music- and culture journalists was being interviewed on national television about a weird documentary wearing a pink “Pink Flag” t-shirt with a modified Black Flag logo. Beyond meta.

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#77

Post by OakNinja »

OakNinja wrote: post #76
chadd wrote: post #2

I left MSFT and went to Viair (with folks from the MSN Mobile and Outlook Express team), and we didn't have a bug tracking system... so we had someone send us a few screenshots of RAID and built a VisualJ clone one weekend. Fun side project, didn't really want to be in the business of bug tracking, was slightly before the web app era... We called our bug tracking system "BlackFlag" because it was a competing brand of…

Fun fact, one of Sweden’s most influential music- and culture journalists was being interviewed on national television about a weird documentary wearing a pink “Pink Flag” t-shirt with a modified Black Flag logo. Beyond meta.

The t-shirt was all pink of course.

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#78

Post by [deleted] »

zestyping wrote: post #45

The bug puns were everywhere! When I started working at Industrial Light and Magic in 1998, there was no bug tracker in regular use. I ended up building a bug tracker in Python called "Roundup" (inspired by a program by Alan Trombla, who came up with the name). To create the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability in case the bug spray lawyers came after us, the icon was a little spinning GIF animation of a cowboy o…

[deleted]

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#79

Post by abiogenesis »

zestyping wrote: post #45

The bug puns were everywhere! When I started working at Industrial Light and Magic in 1998, there was no bug tracker in regular use. I ended up building a bug tracker in Python called "Roundup" (inspired by a program by Alan Trombla, who came up with the name). To create the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability in case the bug spray lawyers came after us, the icon was a little spinning GIF animation of a cowboy o…

That sounds like an interesting historical error, because Roundup is a herbicide, not insecticide.

Re: We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead

#80

Post by ta999999171 »

lilyball wrote: post #52
jkcorrea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you bring up a good point - the reactions are perhaps more bimodal than anything. If you're on one of the teams it was designed for, it is indeed near perfect. If not, it's far from it.

The UI was old and crufty and it was a pain in many ways to work with. But I really miss it because it’s still better than any other issue tracking system I’ve ever used.

Another request, what made it great?
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