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

blog.danslimmon.com

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

#111

Post by bradhe »

Buttons840 wrote: post #99

Here's a thought experiment. You write some code and a code reviewer points out that you used an API incorrectly, which you did because the documentation and test environments are out of sync with the production API. You will, of course, modify your code to use the API correctly, but will you "apologize"? Now again, you call the API incorrectly, but your company doesn't do code reviews and they just ship the code. Yo…

Why is apologizing (that is, accepting responsibility) for an error that you made--in either case, it's an error that you made--such a problem? This seems to come from a place of deep insecurity.

Stop tying your identity to your work.

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

#112

Post by vb6sp6 »

mannykannot wrote: post #109

> It reinforces the idea that any one person or piece of code can be blamed for a given failure. Short of malice, this is never the case. If I make an off-by-one error, where, other than me, did it come from? > It gives the impression that, when you wrote the code, you should have written it better. This is a counterfactual that rarely holds up to examination. If I make an off-by-one error, I could have done better.…

> About the only thing that annoys me at work is people trying to deny responsibility for their actions (or lack of them.)

Someone once said "There is a difference between 10 years of experience and 1 year of experience 10 times". The best developers I know always take responsibility and try to do better.

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

#113

Post by dylan604 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #82
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.…

> Would you accept such nonsense from your plumber, or your dentist, or your electrician? This would be a reasonable comparison if 90% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. This would be a (maybe less) reasonable comparison if 75% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. This would be a middling comparison if 50% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. T…

Orders of magnitude harder? Get over yourself. You sit in a comfy climate controlled office with perks like free food and drinks, gyms, entertainment, etc. You make a mistake, and a program doesn't run correctly. The horror!!!! An electrician, plumber, or dentist makes a mistake and that could result in someone getting hurt or even someone to die.

A dentist doesn't get to run a dev/staging/prod environment before drilling into a tooth. A dentist can't roll back to a more stable previous version of the tooth they just cracked from a mistake that was made. There is no control-z in the real world outside of software devs.

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

#114

Post by saagarjha »

fermienrico wrote: post #94
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.…

When you design a hammer and sell it to the end user, there are limitations on how they can use it. You simply cannot encompass and address every situation that the end user would subject the hammer to. What if they left the hammer in a hot 1500 C oven? The designer cannot design it such that it can universally work in every situation. There are usage guidelines and limitations. A hammer that melts in a furnace is co…

Is it really a bug when your software crashes when there is no memory available? Usually, this isn’t considered one.

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

#115

Post by iamthepieman »

mannykannot wrote: post #109

> It reinforces the idea that any one person or piece of code can be blamed for a given failure. Short of malice, this is never the case. If I make an off-by-one error, where, other than me, did it come from? > It gives the impression that, when you wrote the code, you should have written it better. This is a counterfactual that rarely holds up to examination. If I make an off-by-one error, I could have done better.…

> We should all aspire to do better.

aspiring to do better does not mean aspiring to write bug free code. One is a nearly impossible goal (not over time but certainly at first and certainly when balanced by other constraints)

> About the only thing that annoys me at work is people trying to deny responsibility for their actions (or lack of them.)

There's a difference between denying responsibility and apologizing.

What I do when I find a bug or someone points it out to me is say something like

"I see that. I thought the xxx did yyy but that's clearly not the case. Now that I think about it xxx may also do zzz, is there anything else you can think of that I should take into account"

Or more simply. "Thanks for catching that. I'll put it in the bug tracker. Is this a showstopper for your work?"

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

#116

Post by roosterdawn »

Buttons840 wrote: post #99

Here's a thought experiment. You write some code and a code reviewer points out that you used an API incorrectly, which you did because the documentation and test environments are out of sync with the production API. You will, of course, modify your code to use the API correctly, but will you "apologize"? Now again, you call the API incorrectly, but your company doesn't do code reviews and they just ship the code. Yo…

I'm not sure this was your intention, but you have just described how folks are supposed to do postmortem and retrospectives at most agile shops, as well as how Toyota created the kanban process and implemented the andon cord. It's strange and probably not useful if it's based around assigning guilt. But if it's based around trying to uncover a root cause in process or system deficiency and solving that, then no, it doesn't seem strange to me.

You can modify your code to use the API correctly, but if your team doesn't get the documentation fixed or the test environment to sync back up with the production API, your team is not solving the issue.

Your code can cause headache for everyone after runs in production for a month, but unless your team begins to do code review, you're not solving the issue.

In a very literal sense, the idea of the team finding an issue and resolving it (apology or not) is extremely important and one of the few ways for an organization to improve rather than decay over time. The apology is almost a formality.

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

#117

Post by flippinburgers »

commandlinefan wrote: post #82
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.…

> Would you accept such nonsense from your plumber, or your dentist, or your electrician? This would be a reasonable comparison if 90% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. This would be a (maybe less) reasonable comparison if 75% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. This would be a middling comparison if 50% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. T…

You have got to be kidding me. Do you even understand the consequences of making mistakes in other fields? In some cases an apology isn't even enough. In some cases imprisonment and an utterly ruined career are the result of mistakes. So the idea that apologizing shouldn't happen as a programmer is complete rubbish.

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

#118

Post by saagarjha »

stanmancan wrote: post #48
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know people who’ve programmed microcontrollers in C all their lives and still written bugs. It’s not like switching tooling once in a while is the source of bugs.

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

#119

Post by michaelcampbell »

dylan604 wrote: post #113
commandlinefan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you accept such nonsense from your plumber, or your dentist, or your electrician? This would be a reasonable comparison if 90% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. This would be a (maybe less) reasonable comparison if 75% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. This would be a middling comparison if 50% of software developers could reliably produce bug-free code. T…

Orders of magnitude harder? Get over yourself. You sit in a comfy climate controlled office with perks like free food and drinks, gyms, entertainment, etc. You make a mistake, and a program doesn't run correctly. The horror!!!! An electrician, plumber, or dentist makes a mistake and that could result in someone getting hurt or even someone to die. A dentist doesn't get to run a dev/staging/prod environment before dri…

You're conflating the difficulty of doing something "right" with the result of not doing so.

Also the environment in which this happens is completely irrelevant.

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

#120

Post by eximius »

This seems to conflate ownership/responsibility with admitting a flaw in yourself.

If someone points out a bug, I say thank you. People make mistakes. I am a person. I make mistakes. This is not controversial, it is expected. We should still strive to avoid them and are allowed to be annoyed with ourselves when we make them, but it doesn't make us bad people.

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