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My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

lars.ingebrigtsen.no

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Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#91

Post by josteink »

db48x wrote: post #33
un_ess wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last update is https://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/2022/08/19/19x10/

I haven’t been following along lately, but this one has a line that made me laugh: > And that leads to Emacs hanging if the mode’s font-lock rules hasn’t been written in a careful manner, and they mostly haven’t. No, they mostly haven’t! That applies to so many things :D

I mean, you simply have to appreciate the completely unapologetic honesty in posts like this. I find it very much refreshing!

I'm pretty sure you can't find any public statements by commercial projects written in the same off-handed spirit :)

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#92

Post by matkoniecz »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #84
gspr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No! You slash the number of bug reports . The bugs are still there! Am I missing some joke here?

1. You don't know if they are still there. Thousands of commits have been done since then. Whenever I did go through a long list of old bugs, many were not reproduceable. 2. Many companies have no bug triage process and just fill every bug that is reported. So these are bugs that no one has any intention of fixing. So it's not important if they are there or not. 3. You seem to think that only the bugs in your bugtrac…

If the closing was was purging of not reproduceable/low quality/useless bug reports then it would be different.

Would 10 month old well documented report of critical security issue also would be closed after your purge?

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#93

Post by TomSwirly »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #16

Little bit related: When I come into a company as CTO, and there are too many bugs, I just close all bugs older than 6 months. Usually that's more than 10% (and the org wasn't capable or willing to fix them). Hasn't created any problems yet, but everyone feels better immediately (and we implement ways to not reach high bug levels again).

> I just close all bugs older than 6 months [...] everyone feels better immediately

I mean, people would feel even better if you just closed all the bugs, right?

Some of the oldest unclosed bug reports are the most valuable. because they document long-standing pain points. Not that you would know... :-)

If there were, say, 300 open bugs, you and 4 other people go through and triage them. ("You get bugs whose numbers are 0 mod 5, I get bugs wholes numbers are 1 mod 5", ... )

Organizing lots of tiny bugs into an omnibus bug is also great if all the tasks can be done at the same time. "OMNIBUS: fix help messages. See.... (list of a dozen old closed bugs)"

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#94

Post by caboteria »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #16

Little bit related: When I come into a company as CTO, and there are too many bugs, I just close all bugs older than 6 months. Usually that's more than 10% (and the org wasn't capable or willing to fix them). Hasn't created any problems yet, but everyone feels better immediately (and we implement ways to not reach high bug levels again).

When I buy a second-hand car, if there's a warning light on the instrument panel I put a piece of electrician's tape over it. Hasn't created any problems yet, but everyone feels better immediately.

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#95

Post by KingOfCoders »

caboteria wrote: post #94
KingOfCoders wrote: post #16

Little bit related: When I come into a company as CTO, and there are too many bugs, I just close all bugs older than 6 months. Usually that's more than 10% (and the org wasn't capable or willing to fix them). Hasn't created any problems yet, but everyone feels better immediately (and we implement ways to not reach high bug levels again).

When I buy a second-hand car, if there's a warning light on the instrument panel I put a piece of electrician's tape over it. Hasn't created any problems yet, but everyone feels better immediately.

When my leg is broken, I write a report and it feels much better already.

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#96

Post by ahaferburg »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #2

After 39 years of EMACS maintenance, having over 3000 bugs is embarrassing.

Just wait until you see how many bugs VS Code has!

The amazing thing about that repo is not the amount of open bugs (1700) but the amount of closed ones (24k).

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#97

Post by KingOfCoders »

TomSwirly wrote: post #93
KingOfCoders wrote: post #16

Little bit related: When I come into a company as CTO, and there are too many bugs, I just close all bugs older than 6 months. Usually that's more than 10% (and the org wasn't capable or willing to fix them). Hasn't created any problems yet, but everyone feels better immediately (and we implement ways to not reach high bug levels again).

> I just close all bugs older than 6 months [...] everyone feels better immediately I mean, people would feel even better if you just closed all the bugs, right? Some of the oldest unclosed bug reports are the most valuable. because they document long-standing pain points. Not that you would know... :-) If there were, say, 300 open bugs, you and 4 other people go through and triage them. ("You get bugs whose numbers…

"Some of the oldest unclosed bug reports are the most valuable. because they document long-standing pain points."

Say there is a bug, "The line should be 2 em high" and the bug is not fixed for 6+ months, how is this more valuable because it's older?

Yes, I would agree with the triage, and do it if possible. If an organisation is unwilling to spend resources to fix bugs, a triage doesn't work.

It's the same with this 100 item backlogs, people put things in backlogs at position 20+ that are never developed but suggest they are developed, reducing immediate pain ("No, we're not going to develop this") but trading it for long term pain ("No, it's not in the next Sprint").

Yes, aggregating bugs into an OMNIBUS or aggregating bugs into a feature as requirements is valuable too.

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#98

Post by KingOfCoders »

gspr wrote: post #77
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the org wasn't capable or willing to fix them Probably this. Can't fix everything, and the bugs piling up demoralizes many engineers. Six months is a bit low, I'd go higher, but there's no point having a bug on your board that you're not realistically actually going to fix.

But the proposed action isn't to fix the bugs, it's to delete the documentation of the bugs! Closing your eyes don't make a problem go away. Surely the engineers understand that too, and won't get a moral boost from ignoring the known problems.

I did not suggest to ignore the known problems: "and we implement ways to not reach high bug levels again"

I suggest to close bug reports of bugs that will never get fixed.

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#99

Post by KingOfCoders »

matkoniecz wrote: post #92
KingOfCoders wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You don't know if they are still there. Thousands of commits have been done since then. Whenever I did go through a long list of old bugs, many were not reproduceable. 2. Many companies have no bug triage process and just fill every bug that is reported. So these are bugs that no one has any intention of fixing. So it's not important if they are there or not. 3. You seem to think that only the bugs in your bugtrac…

If the closing was was purging of not reproduceable/low quality/useless bug reports then it would be different. Would 10 month old well documented report of critical security issue also would be closed after your purge?

If you have a critical security issue not fixed ASAP but lying around for 10 months I'd say you have other problems in your organisation than a high bug count.

Re: My goal of closing 10% of Emacs bugs (2020)

#100

Post by TMWNN »

tialaramex wrote: post #73
falcor84 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for being obtuse, but could you please explain what I'm missing. I hope to be one of today's lucky 10,000

Jamie (JWZ) doesn't like Hacker News, so like several other sites he detects this site in referrer headers sent by browsers and if it's present you get a custom image instead of what you wanted to read. I think it's currently this: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2016/hn.png

>Jamie (JWZ) doesn't like Hacker News

Having read his blog for years, I don't think he likes anything or anyone. Not even his nightclub, based on his the past 2.5 years simultaneously a) describing COVID19 as an existential threat to humanity, b) insisting on/bragging about maintaining super-strict requirements for patrons (when San Francisco loosened restrictions, he of course denounced the city as going "against science"), and c) lamenting the continued money drain that his club is.

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