Re: What Kind Of Programmer Are You?

[cajun]

Very interesting thread jcwren !

Several years ago when I was coding, I took the attitude for the most part, that "What a mistake in MY code ??" "No Way".

After getting older, but not necessarily wiser, I've since learned what works best for me is to tell the user to "show me what it is doing". This way, you're not admitting anything, nor are you denying anything. You shouldn't be frowned upon for not wanting to be helpful as you're actively investigating the problem with the user. Quite often I've found either they are trying to do something that was not intended, stupid user tricks, or they actually did find a bug. What ever the result, I either patiently explain to them the error of their ways (while silently having other thoughts) or I ask them to give me a few minutes to resolve the problem. YMMV...

[thoglette]

After getting older, but not necessarily wiser, I've since learned what works best for me is to tell the user to "show me what it is doing". This way, you're not admitting anything, nor are you denying anything.


A very sage piece of advice
I'm into my second decade of programming and engineering. And a few things still stand true:
• the basic defect rate is still around one error per hundred lines of code.
  Industrial strength testing and review will get about 99% of those, which means each year of coding I leave about one real bug. Somewhere.
• Engineers are socially inept.
  Conjugate buggy: my design is perfect; your design is interesting; his design is broken; their design is crap.