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in reply to Re^4: Sometimes, just saying "Thank You" is not good enough
in thread Sometimes, just saying "Thank You" is not good enough

This is completely untrue - there are lots of things that cannot be repeated but definitely happened - like your birth, for example. This statement shows no respect for the vexing but important Heisenbug, or the fact that there are edge cases that are difficult or impossible to replicate, but still happened.

Most importantly, when you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you did, but there may really be a bug there.

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reproductive bugs
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Jun 16, 2010 at 17:46 UTC

    False analogy. 7 billion hairless apes on the horizon show that bug is trivial to reproduce.

    I agree it's important to be sensitive to users and their inability to describe problems well and the possible shortcomings in documentation and UI that exacerbate the situation but when you hit a bug that is impossible to reproduce the chances it was PEBKAC are 1,000 times greater than it being some mystery that must be solved and justifies chasing for a few hours or a few days.

    If it's really not reproducible given a good try, split the difference. Drop some new test and logging around the reported area if it makes sense to try and tell the user you're investigating further. (This advice is not pertinent to banking and medical applications where bugs could possibly mean prison time or dead patients.)

Re^6: Sometimes, just saying "Thank You" is not good enough
by ambrus (Abbot) on Jun 22, 2010 at 08:01 UTC