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I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

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Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#41

Post by old-engineer »

catmanjan wrote: post #23
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #18

Why do software engineers constantly try to project that they are a special snowflake of a profession? Would you accept such nonsense from your plumber, or your dentist, or your electrician? Software engineering is one of the most fundamental building blocks of modern civilization, and yet it continues to be so fragile because of this kind of cavalier attitude. Also, apologizing doesn't mean you have a moral failing.…

I have never heard of a plumber, dentist or electrician apologizing for anything - unless you count court orders...

There always will be good and bad craftsmen. I once overheard my electrician demanding the guy installing the alarm system to lay his cables properly.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#42

Post by old-engineer »

cerberusss wrote: post #37
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #18

Why do software engineers constantly try to project that they are a special snowflake of a profession? Would you accept such nonsense from your plumber, or your dentist, or your electrician? Software engineering is one of the most fundamental building blocks of modern civilization, and yet it continues to be so fragile because of this kind of cavalier attitude. Also, apologizing doesn't mean you have a moral failing.…

Yeah I'd accept it from my dentist. A couple of years ago, they gave me a dental crown for one of my upper right molars. Two months later, it chipped. It felt weird in my mouth. Why wouldn't this be acceptable? They source that crown from a supplier, and apparently there was a fault with it.

Did they apologize and try to fix it? This is not about being perfect. The parent post is fundamentally about caring about your mistakes.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#43

Post by lvturner »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #26
catmanjan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of a plumber, dentist or electrician apologizing for anything - unless you count court orders...

And yet my house has never caught fire due to a miswiring or got flooded due to a misplumbing but let me not even count the ways in which software has failed me. Maybe there's a reason you rarely hear one category apologizing and hear the other category coming up with excuses.

Mine has - my plumber didn't apologise, but he did instruct me over the phone how to properly apply PTFE tape.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#44

Post by diggan »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #38
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #18

Why do software engineers constantly try to project that they are a special snowflake of a profession? Would you accept such nonsense from your plumber, or your dentist, or your electrician? Software engineering is one of the most fundamental building blocks of modern civilization, and yet it continues to be so fragile because of this kind of cavalier attitude. Also, apologizing doesn't mean you have a moral failing.…

Depends on the project, but I'd wager, that software development is a _bit_ more complex than plumbing in many cases.

Make sure you're comparing them equally here. So don't compare the plumber coming to your house to fix a problem with the sink, with a software engineer working at a airspace center for example. The home-plumber vs the home-hacker and the enterprise-plumber vs the enterprise-developer is a more fair comparison, and while I'm not a plumber, I think you underestimate the complexity they deal with when working on a larger scale.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#45

Post by sairamkunala »

old-engineer wrote: post #24
sairamkunala wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comparison is like comparing apples to oranges. I believe we need to get the "context" before judging any situation.

What I think should be common in these two cases is the attitude of a professional towards their work. Building software should be an engineering discipline with all its perks and responsibilities just like building bridges. We rarely see it and it propagates to the craftsmen who seriously believe that good quality software is impossible to write under the slightest of constraints. Like business pressure. We had this…

> What I think should be common in these two cases is the attitude of a professional towards their work.

I think everyone would not deny this fact. Engineering is more of a discipline.

But if you see things practically, this issue of "bad" code may not happen for various number of cases. For example, unclear project requirements, use cases etc., That is where 'context' of what happened helps to better understand the situation.

Building bridges are not done agile and it has a learnings from decades or even centuries. Computer Engineering is mostly agile where you push changes based on changing requirements.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#47

Post by adrianN »

catmanjan wrote: post #39
adrianN wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it continues to be so fragile because software engineers build virtual machines with enormous numbers of moving parts that need to change all the time but nobody wants to pay the price for exhaustive testing (not to speak of the price of formal verification). We are pretty good at writing software with a very small number of bugs, it just costs a few orders of magnitude more than normal software.

Its because software is always "new" Imagine if an electricians invented new types of wires for every job they did I'm not sure why software is the way it is, maybe it will be more like a trade in a few decades...

No it's because a piece of software with a few hundred thousand lines of code has a state space that boggles the mind. And then that software interacts with a dozen other services of similar size. And then new features need to be added every few weeks. It's completely incomparable to wiring up a normal house.

In buildings with nontrivial electrical systems, shit hits the fan really quickly too. Just look at the absolute mess that is the fire prevention system in Berlin's new airport for example.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#48

Post by stanmancan »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #26
catmanjan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of a plumber, dentist or electrician apologizing for anything - unless you count court orders...

And yet my house has never caught fire due to a miswiring or got flooded due to a misplumbing but let me not even count the ways in which software has failed me. Maybe there's a reason you rarely hear one category apologizing and hear the other category coming up with excuses.

Plumbing and electrical doesn’t change all too often. Once you learn the ins and outs it doesn’t change much over your career. Not the case with software development.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#49

Post by jsjw7sbw »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #26
catmanjan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never heard of a plumber, dentist or electrician apologizing for anything - unless you count court orders...

And yet my house has never caught fire due to a miswiring or got flooded due to a misplumbing but let me not even count the ways in which software has failed me. Maybe there's a reason you rarely hear one category apologizing and hear the other category coming up with excuses.

Still you insure your house for those things though. I think you are comparing apples with oranges here.

Re: I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code

#50

Post by erikbye »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #3

So sure, bugs happen, regardless of how good you are. But there really are some people who constantly make mistakes, and those that rarely do. There are people on my team where, when there is a bug, I just start looking at diffs of what they have committed because more likely than not, they caused the problem. I think it's important to reinforce an attitude of trying to become better and people who give a shit when t…

> There are people on my team where, when there is a bug, I just start looking at diffs of what they have committed because more likely than not, they caused the problem.

If you can tell the bug from looking at diffs, why was the bug not caught in code review or by tests? Most obvious bugs should be caught this way.

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