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- Hacker News
- Our brain is geared towards efficient signal processing, and is actively working to delete signals it deems "unnecessary". It wants us to notice only the new and the unexpected; that's why after a short while you don't notice the same smell or the same recurrent noise. They are just ignored as "already detected / not new".
The reason for this may be evolutionary (although we don't know what traits were the most effective to help us survive in the wild); but there is a very practical reason to ignore signals, which is that there's so may of them: if we did process every data sent from every sensor and thought about odors, light, temperature, noise, etc. then we would be overwhelmed and could not do anything else.
That's also why we usually don't "see" things or people: we identify them. We don't see faces, we simply identify Alice or Bob. Which in turn explains why most people can't draw: the concept of Alice can't be drawn; to draw Alice we need to actually follow the features of her face. Being an artist means being able to unlearn (or disable) that identification process.
And I think the reason most people don't see bugs is similar: they're not interested, all they want is to get something done. If there's a simple workaround that makes the thing work, then that's good enough; all the rest is irrelevant. This is not bias or benevolence: this is efficiency.
by bambax - Blackboard is definitely a really strong contender for the worst software I've ever had to use. When I was in uni, I went so far as to write an alternative that scraped the content from blackboard and published it on a site that I could actually browse sensibly.
They were paying exorbitant amounts of money for the license too.
by nicoburns - Applications like Blackboard exist because of the genre of "Checkboxware."
A University must comply with Laws and Regulations X, Y, Z, P, D and Q and a host of other regulations the University never heard of and Blackboard went through the process to "comply" with those checkboxes. So, if you deploy Blackboard, you tick all the checkboxes automatically.
The fact that Blackboard was a garbage content management system and a terrible grade recording system was irrelevant--because the "better" systems wouldn't check the boxes.
(I say this as someone who, as a lecturer, had to manage the account logins, mailing list, and Subversion source control system for an entire class. I only ever put grades that needed to be "secure" into Blackboard. I did all that because I HATED Blackboard that badly, but it was a LOT of work. And I probably wouldn't have passed any significant security audit; although my accessibility ratings should have been excellent since everything was plain text and plain HTML)
by bsder - This is rather interesting to read. But it reinforces something I've seen in my career. The majority of users of software I've helped build, they use it in ways that are mind bending to me. Workflows I would never think of, that somehow do what they need.
The second one is most software contains bugs. Users that expect to get things done simply choose workflows to avoid the worst consequence of those bugs very quickly.
by sidewndr46 - > The second one is most software contains bugs. Users that expect to get things done simply choose workflows to avoid the worst consequence of those bugs very quickly.
I feel like a substantial source of everyday irritation are bugs like this in bad software. It’s frustrating that devs just don’t care.
You could make software that doesn’t require your users to work around its shortcomings.
by asimilator - Those habitual mitigations go a long way. Just like there is defensive programming, there is defensive usage.
Under Windows: Don't put your files into "My Documents" or similar folder hierarchies; you never know if old software will correctly deal with the abstraction.
Working with files in general: Avoid nonstandard unicode names or long paths so your external hard drive doesn't choke on them. Avoid case sensitivity even when it is allowed on Unix systems, since you can't assume Windows won't ever touch them. Avoid whitespaces in names because sooner or later, some script won't escape them.
On the internet: Never draft long comments in the browser; always use a local text file. Anything can happen in the browser.
In games: Never save your game during what looks like a complex scripted scene even if the game does allow saving.
Using search engines: Avoid keywords that are likely to confuse/distract the search.
With dropbox-likes: Give it some time to sync even after the icon is green; god knows what is being predictively shortcutted under the hood.
Everywhere: Restart the program or system if certain signs of corruption appear. You don't know what's going wrong, but you know something is, and barring some unusually careful compartmentalization, a piece of software is still a state machine which, once it has strayed from the right path, cannot be trusted at all. OSes nowadays are adapted to this, but much of software is not, and you do not want to have it corrupt your file.
by generationP - >I thought this had something to do with how I use computers but, over time, I've realized that it's mostly that people are hitting the same bugs and don't notice.
I suspect I know why they do not notice. See below.
>it works well, etc., but when I open up the thing and try it, it's in a state where the thing only works if you do quite a few non-intuitive workarounds.
I suspect most people are so inept at navigating UI because even a good UI is not intuitive to them. A bad UI is equally not intuitive. They do not know it is a bug because everything is a bug to them.
I can use a novel UI and figure out where to find what I need to do very quickly. In my experience with lay people, they can use the software for a decade longer than me and still not understand some of the capabilities and navigate to utilize them as I can within a few minutes or small amount of research.
Shoutout to https://grumpy.website/. Love it.
by ghastmaster - >I suspect most people are so inept at navigating UI because even a good UI is not intuitive to them. A bad UI is equally not intuitive. They do not know it is a bug because everything is a bug to them.
This seems a weird thing to believe given that we know there are such things as black UI patterns designed to keep users from doing things they might want to do, but which the company might not want they do yet still are obliged to provide the possibility of doing.
As a general rule I think I am pretty good with finding out things about software, for example in pretty much every company I've worked at I'm one of the only devs who learns Jira's query language, and how to make my own dashboards to organize things, but I do at times experience UIs that I either must believe are malicious or buggy, and I stand by that interpretation no matter how they people who work at the company like to claim it is working as intended.
But I have also experienced some times when I think the way this UI works must be a bug, because otherwise the people who designed it must be incompetent idiots and also, given laws about accessibility requirements, potentially on the hook for some monetary payments in court soon.
My interpretation has been that I am often to quick to think things are bugs and not worthwhile using because I am familiar with how buggy things can be and still "work" somewhat, and also that normal uneducated users will try to soldier through things I just give up on because they don't realize that a thing should not be working the way it does, they think it is them that are wrong - as evidently you do as well. I think it is frankly a strange viewpoint to have in the world of software development, which world I assume you are a part of?
- I also think it's due to normalization of deviance, people are just used to it..
- You can't build a model, because everything will be changed with the next update, so, even if not consciously, people won't do it, why bother learning something that's not going to be of any use next time you use the application.
- because you basically don't know how anything works, it's a coin toss whether it's actually not working, or you're just "using it wrong".
- most things won't do the thing you expect of them consistently, so you don't expect anything of them.
Last night, I uploaaded some documents to my insurance company => modal:
- Title: "Files successfully uploaded"
- Text: "An unknown error occurred"
- Button: "Ok"
Thank you.
by dusted - I once asked my brother in law (a mechanic) to help me look over and buy a new secondhand car. The car we ended up buying had good fundamentals, low cost, good brand, big trunk, high top speed.
After owning it for a while, I came to learn that it was not a great car. Things constantly broke and the repairs cost me more overall than the cost of the car. A complete disaster.
I came to realise that to a mechanic, little problems like an old fuel pump or poorly maintained engine were "easy" problems to fix. To my brother in law, what mattered was the low price and the fundamentals. Repairs, to him, were easy. To me (not a mechanic) they were expensive and inconvenient.
I think, for a developer, problems with software are a bit like this. Little things that are easy to fix can be overlooked because the grand design of the system is very clever or it has some advantage over other software like handling a particular file format, or processing a high volume of transactions.
Personally, I find it very difficult to sit down and expend the attention and effort to really look at and test my own software. I think because every little issue that I see becomes another job, another hassle, another delay in releasing. Maybe thats my "Bug Blindness", not sure if it's the same.
- That is the reason why too many nerds recommended Linux as a "easy" windows alternative. What for us is easy to fix and often not even worth thinking about it, is impossible for a normal person.by lukan
- I'm with danluu on this, at least as far as the headline, and not actual details.
I run into 10 to 20 software bugs a day (feels like more). If it wasn't for the all the private data I'd leak I sometimes wish I could just put my phone and computer on screen capture for a week, with input data (keyboard/mouse/touchpad/screen) and then come back and post the 100 bugs I hit that week.
I've run into the MacOS one mentioned, getting a black screen on opening the lid. I've also run into iOS Camera app failing to open the camera. I've run into the iOS keyboard only using 80% of the width of the phone (all the keys smaller). No idea how to fix that. Closing the keyboard and re-opening does not. And killing the app, whatever app, is out because I'm in the middle of filling out a form and don't want to have to start over. I've had the phone's screen freeze quite often recently, no response to any finger presses. Locking and unlocking the phone recovers. This one is new (started happening 1-2 weeks ago)
Common/not-common. Any app that uses the phone camera to scan things (checks/ids) almost always fails in one way or another. Doesn't recognize the thing or times out like the only way they tested was in perfect conditions in their office and never tried with real users.
by socalgal2 - >> post the 100 bugs I hit that week.
But nobody cares. Posting bugs is mostly pointless, it's wasted time. Nowadays even for paid products quality is not a priority.
by ponector - > I've run into the iOS keyboard only using 80% of the width of the phone (all the keys smaller).
Are you sure you're not triggering the compact width keyboard?
by saagarjha - >I've run into the MacOS one mentioned, getting a black screen on opening the lid.
this is similar to what happens to me, if the screen goes dark to save battery and I move it to start back up too quickly, like within a couple of seconds, it will crash and restart.
So sometimes I see it is going to go dark and I move to stop it but it goes dark a microsecond before I touch the touchpad and then everything needs to start up again.
- > I've also run into iOS Camera app failing to open the camera.
wow, you just reminded me.
From time to time I bring up the camera app, and I just get a blurry screen. I have to lock the phone and unlock it, maybe quitting the camera app before I get the camera app coming up showing what the camera sees.
I just worked around it and got on with my life and didn't yak-shave (search for a solution or file a bug)
by m463 - > I've run into the iOS keyboard only using 80% of the width of the phone (all the keys smaller).
Likely the one handed keyboard feature: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1mi7kjd/til_onehand...
by nojs - Interesting topic, and funny that I personally consider the text width and font size of danluu’s blog to be a “bug”. It is well known that we can read faster with narrower text columns (remember newspaper columns when they were printed on paper). This is why I always read this particular blog with Apple’s Reader mode, which renders the text using larger font and narrower width.by meling
- > It is well known that we can read faster with narrower text
Speak for yourself.
Font size is client setting, and there's where lies any bug.
by chrisjj - I think this is intentional?
I use Firefox reader, but the same idea. I actually prefer it this way (except I don't like that the reader doesn't support Vi/Emacs navigation...)
For content that is just text, I prefer that the author keeps the styling to the minimum. It makes it easier to do it the way I want it client-side.
by crabbone - There is no CSS configuration for text/font on the website, so it's using browser defaults.
Seems like reader mode is needed due to bad defaults.
by watermelon0 - Indeed. It is unreadable without a Reader mode.by nchmy
- Responding to something from the linked Patreon post:
> Blackboard (as well as Epic and SharePoint) are classic examples of software where the user and the purchaser are different and the purchaser basically doesn’t care about the user, so you don’t expect the software to be good and it would be a bit of a surprised if the software didn’t deliver a bad user experience. But it was even more surprising to me that someone working on some of the most reviled software out there could think that the software was widely loved.
I worked briefly at Epic and the attitude there seemed to be more like "yes we know people hate Epic but they're wrong". :P People there didn't think Epic was widely liked!
(The explanations given were basically, 1. people hate Epic because their IT department configured it wrong, if they configured it in a more suitable manner they wouldn't have these problems, and, 2. it's not Epic per se that's the problem it's all EMR software, if you think Epic is bad you should see the competition, they're even worse. I'm not sure that second one is really such a good excuse, but, that was what I remember hearing.)
by Sniffnoy - A close acquaintance was on Medicaid, and then got a new job and was moved off of Medicaid onto an insurance plan they were paying for. Medicaid is administered by insurance companies; the same company administered both their Medicaid plan, and the plan they were now paying for.
As it so happened, within a week of this occurring they needed urgent care, badly, no joke. We have basically three choices here (at least, which would take this insurer), and none of the three would see them, and the reason was the same in all cases: 1) they no longer had Medicaid, and 2) the provider couldn't let them pay cash and sort it out with the insurance company themselves.
It took three days calling the insurer, providers, the State health exchange, finally getting the insurer on the phone DIRECTLY with one of the providers... at a clinic rather than in admin... the insurer directly telling the clinic administrators that the person was insured and the insurance company would give them a claim number right now, or something like that... before we could get them in to see a doctor.
When we got to the clinic they looked them up and STILL told them they couldn't see them we had to demand to speak to an administrator and basically THEY COULDN'T CHECK THEM IN TO THEIR APPOINTMENT in their computer.
All of these providers used Epic. I made some additional phone calls and had some additional conversations, made a writeup, and sent it to the insurer, the benefit exchange, and the provider who ultimately saw us. Never heard anything from anyone.
by m3047 - I had to give up when the first example of a "bug" that the author could see, which others are blind to, was search results.
"In some cases, people sent me their actual search results. In every such case, the search results did not contain a good result that I could see"
Software that does not meet expectations, especially in a field like search, which is basically a long running war between SEO and search engines, is not a 'bug'. That's like saying there is 'bug blindness' in the publishing industry because when I pick up a random book, it sucks, even though others think it's fine. Sure, maybe something is wrong, could even be improved, but lets save the word 'bug' for something more specific.
by encomiast - Later on he gives an example of Blackboard software that was very disliked. So I don't see what was unique in his perspective either. To me this article is not very focused and feels mostly like rambling. The core idea that we get accustomed to bugs/quality in software we use is sound. Just the article needs streamlining or better a complete rewrite.by rotis
- > Software that does not meet expectations, especially in a field like search, which is basically a long running war between SEO and search engines, is not a 'bug'.
While bug has various definitions, not meeting reasonable expectations is common to all.
> That's like saying there is 'bug blindness' in the publishing industry because when I pick up a random book, it sucks
No, because there's no reasonable expectation that a random book won"t suck.
by chrisjj - Dan isn't necessarily Bertrand Russell so ill give him a pass for not using the perfect word in every place.
But this article is in my opinion one of the best attempts at explaining a fundamental problem in software product work that has never (in my experience) been laid out this well. I will implore you to finish it.
by ramraj07 - Later in the article he uses "quality blindness" instead, which is probably a better description of most of the issues he talks about.by aesthesia
- At what point does search quality degrade to the point where is becomes a bug?
A bug is when actual behavior does not match stated or intended behavior. If the search bears little connection to what was searched for, then it is a bug, as far as the user is concerned.
Or maybe you mean to say we should reserve the word bug for deviations that are unintentional?
by prmph