{"id":214,"date":"2008-09-23T09:17:38","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T16:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=214"},"modified":"2008-09-23T09:17:38","modified_gmt":"2008-09-23T16:17:38","slug":"rant-i-hate-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2008\/09\/23\/rant-i-hate-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Rant: I hate software"},"content":{"rendered":"

also posted on Pam’s House Blend<\/em><\/a>.<\/a>
\nfor a good time, compare and contrast
\nhow Soapblox (there) and WordPress (here)
\ndisplay the URLs in the quotes \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

As a “grand old man” of the software engineering field of defect detection<\/a>, I sometimes take it personally when I run into bugs or usability problems.\u00c2\u00a0 My IM friends are never surprised when I switch from a conversation on another topic to a rant about how it doesn’t need to be that way<\/strong> <\/em>and running commentary about my search for a workaround while lamenting that so few companies — or open-source projects — bother to go for the rather-obvious competitive advantage of making software that works reliably and well<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 It usually ends in comments in something like<\/p>\n

jon: doesn’t look like there’s any way to get around it.\u00c2\u00a0 i hate software<\/p>\n

friend: lol.\u00c2\u00a0 looks like you picked the wrong profession then<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ha ha.<\/p>\n

These days, I spend a chunk of time thinking about bugs from a strategic perspective, as part of the consulting work I’m doing for Coverity: which are the ones people will pay money for, which technologies can find them most effectively, where are the holes in the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 On the political activism front, I worry about the possibilities for hackers exploiting bugs for some kind of e-deceptive practices as we get close to the election.\u00c2\u00a0 These are big deals …<\/p>\n

But it’s the day-to-day stuff that really grates.\u00c2\u00a0 Yesterday I made a comment<\/a> in the Quotes of the Day<\/a> thread on Shakesville<\/em> with a couple of links that I thought would be useful.\u00c2\u00a0 When I looked at what I had posted, it was badly formatted:<\/p>\n

Matt Stoller’s A Skeptics caucus forms in the house<\/a> and <a href=”http:\/\/www.openleft.com\/showDiary.do;jsessionid=6AB2AD3F71B7FA926C37F72636C66E11?diaryId=8413″>Skeptics Caucus Enthusiastic, Oil Prices Skyrocket give some interesting perspectives on this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oops.\u00c2\u00a0 It seemed like I had forgotten the closing “<\/a>” to end one of the HTML links.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, it’s not the first time I’ve made that mistake — Disqus, the software that powers Shakesville’s comments, doesn’t have a “preview” button, so it’s easy to overlook.<\/p>\n

And this is the kind of stuff that burns me up … how can discussion software in 2008 not <\/strong>have a preview button?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve talked before about the power issues associated with commenting functionality<\/a>, but just think about it from a customer satisfaction perspective.\u00c2\u00a0 Most users — like me — prefer not to get embarrassed and so would rather have the option to preview their posts first and correct their mistakes.\u00c2\u00a0 Most readers would prefer to see the posts after they’ve been corrected.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not like “preview” functionality is rocket science; open source systems like Slashcode, Soapblox, Scoop and commercial products like WordPress, MySpace, and ezBoard\/Yuku have had it for eons.\u00c2\u00a0 What were they thinking?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t they use their own product?<\/p>\n

Well, yeah, part of the reason I was so irritated here was that I was kicking myself for not having included the <\/a> and proof-read my comment before posting.\u00c2\u00a0 Really, though, is it so unreasonable of me to want the software to help me when I make a mistake, rather than rub my nose in it by displaying it to the world?<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Disqus lets you edit your comments.\u00c2\u00a0 At least, sometimes it does, and I’ve successfully edited comments once or twice.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually, however, I can’t figure out how to do it, and after poking around for a while (“didn’t their used to be an ‘edit’ link here?”) I give up in disgust.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Yesterday was no exception.\u00c2\u00a0 So I decided to post a correction — and this time, I double-checked before posting.<\/p>\n

Sorry ’bout that. The correct link is “<a href=”http:\/\/www.openleft.com\/showDiary.do;jsessionid=6AB2AD3F71B7FA926C37F72636C66E11?diaryId=8413”>Skeptics Caucus Enthusiastic, Oil Prices Skyrocket.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hey, wait a second!<\/p>\n

Maybe it wasn’t me?<\/p>\n

bangs head. edit isn’t working for me. i hate software.<\/p>\n

<a href=”http:\/\/www.openleft.com\/showDiary.do;jsessionid=6AB2AD3F71B7FA926C37F72636C66E11?diaryId=8413″>Skeptics Caucus Enthusiastic, Oil Prices Skyrocket.<\/p>\n

Third time’s a charm?<\/p>\n

Apologies, all …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sure enough: there’s a bug.\u00c2\u00a0 MaryL mentioned that Disqus doesn’t like some odd characters (and helpfully provided the tinyurl equivalent<\/a>), and Liss suggested that it’s specifically the interaction between question marks and long URLs that triggers the bug.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it wonderful how in a Web 2.0 world, we all have to learn learn software debugging and quality assurance techniques just to live our lives?<\/p>\n

And there’s no excuse for this bug.\u00c2\u00a0 Interpreting HTML like this correctly is a problem that’s been solved repeatedly, and it’s no secret which “HTML engines” work better or worse.\u00c2\u00a0 Why didn’t Disqus choose the one they did?<\/p>\n

It’s not just Disqus, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the entire industry, making choices like this, not prioritizing their users’ experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Disappointing — and disrespectful.<\/p>\n

And speaking of disrespectful, by now I had managed to clutter the thread with multiple comments that didn’t have anything to do with the original topic.\u00c2\u00a0 Oops.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d delete them and clean up after myself … but if that functionality exists, I can’t find it.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Alternatively, it would be great if the site admins could edit … oh but wait; when Disqus moved to its “2.0” platform, one of the “improvements” was taking away the ability for admins to edit users comments.\u00c2\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n

I hate software.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

also posted on Pam’s House Blend. for a good time, compare and contrast how Soapblox (there) and WordPress (here) display the URLs in the quotes \ud83d\ude42 As a “grand old man” of the software engineering field of defect detection, I sometimes take it personally when I run into bugs or usability problems.\u00c2\u00a0 My IM friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9],"tags":[58,103,286,328],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-professional","tag-bugs","tag-defects","tag-qa","tag-software-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}