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It's not the $7, but the principle

antti.vilpponen.net

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Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#51

Post by derleth »

samatman wrote: post #39
_wp3r wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not a Bonaparte quote. The below is an interesting history of how that quote got into the hacker consciousness. Mostly from the Jargon file. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I had never read that! Charming. The punchline is, it's actually Heinlein's razor. Which makes perfect sense. (yes the wiki refers to a Robert Hanlon of Scranton, PA. This is probably only amusing if you're from America and know that Scranton is the archetypal funny place to be from)

> Scranton is the archetypal funny place to be from

Up there with Walla Walla, Washington and Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#53

Post by gkoberger »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #46
ahoge wrote: post #40

Well, "tricked"... sounds more like a silly bug to me. Stuff like this is easy to miss during testing, because you test these things in isolation.

It's very unlikely that this is a bug. There is no reason that that a failed form validation would save the states of all the input fields EXCEPT the bundle selector.

Radio buttons are more prone to logical errors than normal fields, just due to the way they work. They're not rocket scientist hard, but they're totally "I didn't have enough coffee and screwed up the logic" hard.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#54

Post by mixmastamyk »

weaksauce wrote: post #43
pwg wrote: post #38

From the article: " I entered my credit card number with spacing like 1234 1234 1234 1234 and all the other information as necessary. After I clicked “Submit your order”, the form returned an error and asked me to fix the credit card number so that there are no spaces ..." Why do so many web developers insist on forcing me to enter a 16 digit number _without_ spaces when a computer is excellent (and fast) at removal…

A lot of programmers are terrible at their craft.

And/or management that doesn't allow devs to spend time on user-friendly features.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#55

Post by ciclista »

epo wrote: post #47

Whenever anyone says "It's not x, it's the principle", it's x, it's always x.

Not really. I had a similar issues a while ago. Paid $5 for a test account (vps), customer rep lied to me about some issues then refused to refund. The $5 really wasn't worth my time, but I don't appreciate being lied to and having my time wasted, so I made sure make some public complaints on Twitter (after no response through their ticketing service).

So yes, it can be about the principle.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#56

Post by beambot »

pwg wrote: post #38

From the article: " I entered my credit card number with spacing like 1234 1234 1234 1234 and all the other information as necessary. After I clicked “Submit your order”, the form returned an error and asked me to fix the credit card number so that there are no spaces ..." Why do so many web developers insist on forcing me to enter a 16 digit number _without_ spaces when a computer is excellent (and fast) at removal…

Maybe they had more pressing concerns? Perhaps they believe their time is better spent improving their product (providing more value) rather than automatically removing spaces in a credit card form? Maybe the OP was the first to find it particularly vexing / frustrating?

All of these things are tradeoffs. Especially in small, young organizations... it's not reasonable or realistic to polish every single thing. In fact, not focusing on this particular element probably aligns with pg's #1 "hardest lesson for startups to learn": http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

EDIT: In this case... it's talking about FastCompany, so "startup" probably doesn't apply. But most journalism companies are really hurting right now, so allocating resources is still probably problematic. The shady customer service is the more damning thing.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#57

Post by FreakLegion »

beambot wrote: post #56
pwg wrote: post #38

From the article: " I entered my credit card number with spacing like 1234 1234 1234 1234 and all the other information as necessary. After I clicked “Submit your order”, the form returned an error and asked me to fix the credit card number so that there are no spaces ..." Why do so many web developers insist on forcing me to enter a 16 digit number _without_ spaces when a computer is excellent (and fast) at removal…

Maybe they had more pressing concerns? Perhaps they believe their time is better spent improving their product (providing more value) rather than automatically removing spaces in a credit card form? Maybe the OP was the first to find it particularly vexing / frustrating? All of these things are tradeoffs. Especially in small, young organizations... it's not reasonable or realistic to polish every single thing. In fac…

"We have more pressing concerns than calling string.replace()" -- ? I don't think this particular case quite rises to the level of a "tradeoff." It's a single function built into just about every high-level language.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#58

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ruswick wrote: post #41

There's no evidence to suggest that this was malicious in any way, nor anything to suggest that FC intended to "trick" him. Plenty of service implement these types of defaults, and bugs occasionally happen. He's taking a presumptuous "principled" stand against something that is not necessarily an ethical issue. Sometimes shit just breaks. He has no idea whether there was any malicious intent, nor has he even finished…

The company's web page is their agent to the web world. No matter why that agent cheated this guy; its the companies fault. That's how agency works.

Sure we as engineers can diagnose what web error caused the issue. But we can also surely imagine its not the first time tech support has handled the matter, and its still a problem.

At this point there is plenty to blame the company for, even with a liberal tolerance for incompetence. Why not fix the bug? Its easy to not fix a bug that's raking in money.

To be called a responsible company, they have to fix those bugs FIRST.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#59

Post by JoeAltmaier »

masnick wrote: post #34

Why is this on the front page? It sounds like a bug with a web form and a problem with non-responsive customer service, neither of which are uncommon.

Because the periodical is one of 'ours' - a tech industry rag. Its possible we hold them to a higher standard, and rightly so.

Re: It's not the $7, but the principle

#60

Post by beambot »

FreakLegion wrote: post #57
beambot wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they had more pressing concerns? Perhaps they believe their time is better spent improving their product (providing more value) rather than automatically removing spaces in a credit card form? Maybe the OP was the first to find it particularly vexing / frustrating? All of these things are tradeoffs. Especially in small, young organizations... it's not reasonable or realistic to polish every single thing. In fac…

"We have more pressing concerns than calling string.replace()" -- ? I don't think this particular case quite rises to the level of a "tradeoff." It's a single function built into just about every high-level language.

Last time I implemented a CC regex, it was a little more involved than just removing empty spaces. So you see... Your trite example fails to pass muster just as well. (Anymore, I'd just use one of many Stripe libraries... no fuss, no muss.)
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