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Bug Blindness

danluu.com

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Re: Bug Blindness

#41

Post by thelastgallon »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

I’m really anal about the Quality of my own software, and tend to be hard on others’ software (doesn’t make me too popular). > I've had multiple jobs where directors/VPs/execs/etc. sometimes ask me to evaluate something when they want an actual opinion from someone who is relatively likely to notice issues (and fix them or drive fixes for them if necessary). I’ve had the experience where I need to be asked, and even…

> When someone makes a proposal, I tend to immediately see the potential issues, and used to point them out, and suggest workarounds or mitigation strategies, without being asked.

> Not the happy path. I get accused of being “negative,” my suggestion is shitcanned, and I’m shunned.

Absolutely right. People come up with some of the most idiotic ideas, but you aren't supposed to point out the obvious flaws. These 'ideas' create a lot of jobs and success stories. The purpose of a system is what it does. Everyone wants to build an empire and they need more and more headcount, which means incredibly shitty ideas, and tons of people working on them. Everyone claims success and moves on to the next shitty idea next year for more success. Thats why, even if AI can make developers more productive, it doesn't really matter, the vast majority of projects in bigcorp are bad ideas. If your bad ideas go faster, doesn't mean it increases revenue or profit. It only helps the people involved to claim more 'success'. Now, with AI.

Re: Bug Blindness

#42

Post by DrewADesign »

sgentle wrote: post #27

I think there are two opposite causes here: either an overly-aligned or completely unaligned mental model. For developers, bug-blindness tends to be because their mental model is so close to the system's model that both have the same blind spots, and the developer can't effectively think outside the system (the classic "QA walks into a bar, orders 0 beers, orders -1 beers, orders 0.999 beers" vs "customer walks into…

> a common way for regular people to interact with a system is they just... don't have a model. None at all. Like, they click a thing and see what it does, and if it doesn't do what they expect they shrug and click something else. The horror of seeing a non-software person using a software system is realising that they usually cannot tell the difference between expected and unexpected behaviour, because they don't really form expectations in the first place. The computer is more genie than machine.

This is completely lost on most developers, which is why interface and UX designers exist. Developers, especially in FOSS projects, often love to condescendingly assert that users are just not reading the docs, or are not smart enough to understand the software. They’re smart enough— they just don’t want to have to learn about technical implementation details for the same reason most developers are perfectly content to use personal bookkeeping apps instead of learning the best ways to organize that data and making the spreadsheets manually. Most non-technologists get no dopamine hit from solving technical problems, have no need for the requisite knowledge needed to confidently do that, and are often just trying to make the computer do what it must so they can get back to doing what they’re actually passionate and knowledgeable about. When a competing product has an interface built for people without that mental model, it would have to be pretty fucking expensive to not be a no-brainier for most nontechnical users.

Re: Bug Blindness

#43

Post by [deleted] »

sgentle wrote: post #27

I think there are two opposite causes here: either an overly-aligned or completely unaligned mental model. For developers, bug-blindness tends to be because their mental model is so close to the system's model that both have the same blind spots, and the developer can't effectively think outside the system (the classic "QA walks into a bar, orders 0 beers, orders -1 beers, orders 0.999 beers" vs "customer walks into…

[deleted]

Re: Bug Blindness

#44

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

I feel cursed with the opposite of this. I can't seem to go 12 hours without finding a bug in software which it's not my job to test. It's all so awful. I waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to report these bugs, because they offend me.

Just once I'd like to believe, for a little while, that this industry has produced something worth being proud of.

Re: Bug Blindness

#45

Post by atmavatar »

DrewADesign wrote: post #42
sgentle wrote: post #27

I think there are two opposite causes here: either an overly-aligned or completely unaligned mental model. For developers, bug-blindness tends to be because their mental model is so close to the system's model that both have the same blind spots, and the developer can't effectively think outside the system (the classic "QA walks into a bar, orders 0 beers, orders -1 beers, orders 0.999 beers" vs "customer walks into…

> a common way for regular people to interact with a system is they just... don't have a model. None at all. Like, they click a thing and see what it does, and if it doesn't do what they expect they shrug and click something else. The horror of seeing a non-software person using a software system is realising that they usually cannot tell the difference between expected and unexpected behaviour, because they don't re…

> They’re smart enough

I worked at a small company that had a policy of putting devs on front-line support in a rotation, both because it was too small to have dedicated support staff and because the owners wanted devs to understand how users interacted with the system better.

I can assure you that while some users merely think differently than devs, there is cohort of users who are absolutely not smart enough. It's impossible to do any amount of front-line support without collecting some horror stories.

Re: Bug Blindness

#46

Post by m3kw9 »

A bit of perfectionism helps with esp UI bugs. A little flash, slight unusual pause, trying different ways to break the code..

Re: Bug Blindness

#47

Post by ChannelFence »

sgentle wrote: post #27

I think there are two opposite causes here: either an overly-aligned or completely unaligned mental model. For developers, bug-blindness tends to be because their mental model is so close to the system's model that both have the same blind spots, and the developer can't effectively think outside the system (the classic "QA walks into a bar, orders 0 beers, orders -1 beers, orders 0.999 beers" vs "customer walks into…

the people without a model are also the easiest users to lose, they won't file a bug or explain what broke. they'll just click twice, decide the product is unreliable and use something else. then the team sees no bug report and assumes everything is fine.

Re: Bug Blindness

#48

Post by AlotOfReading »

nlawalker wrote: post #26
transcriptase wrote: post #14

My absolute favorite bug is the one where the “cancel your Amazon Music subscription” is seemingly the only one of what must be tens of thousands of UI elements in the Amazon app that simply loads a blank white screen no matter what. What are the odds!

Sounds like credit card sites. Most everything is pretty creaky; “redeem rewards” is broken or offline for maintenance; “pay bill” is greased lightning all the way through.

I've noticed exactly the opposite with other kinds of lenders. Refinancing and renegotiation is optimized to the hilt, but the payments system seems to have an SLA of zero 9s.

Re: Bug Blindness

#49

Post by bentcorner »

jakevoytko wrote: post #29
moyix wrote: post #25

Parts of this reminded me pleasantly of one of my favorite John Regehr posts, "Operant Conditioning by Software Bugs" https://blog.regehr.org/archives/861

This reminds me of my first job, where we did a lot of 3d modeling and mobile robotics research. When we were trying to reproduce motion bugs, a coworker of mine would track down our manager and put him at the controls. More times than not, the bug would surface and it'd trip our logging and we tracked it down. I asked him why he does this. His explanation was really built on this operant conditioning idea: "we use t…

Reminds me of watching my wife use her computer. I'd help her with something and realize all the little things more regular computer users just put up with. Incorrect focus, focus stealing, windows popping up behind current windows, unclear window styling, invisible scrollbars, moving page elements, unclear instructions, the list goes on and on and on.

Re: Bug Blindness

#50

Post by mcbishop »

DrewADesign wrote: post #42
sgentle wrote: post #27

I think there are two opposite causes here: either an overly-aligned or completely unaligned mental model. For developers, bug-blindness tends to be because their mental model is so close to the system's model that both have the same blind spots, and the developer can't effectively think outside the system (the classic "QA walks into a bar, orders 0 beers, orders -1 beers, orders 0.999 beers" vs "customer walks into…

> a common way for regular people to interact with a system is they just... don't have a model. None at all. Like, they click a thing and see what it does, and if it doesn't do what they expect they shrug and click something else. The horror of seeing a non-software person using a software system is realising that they usually cannot tell the difference between expected and unexpected behaviour, because they don't re…

I love the UX-design book: Don't Make Me Think.
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