Re: Suggest Bounty for Defects

--- In http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WebLabs-requests/message/797,
"Ken Kahn" <kenkahn@t...> wrote:

> Regarding Ylva's bugs one of them
. . . > only manifested itself if all the following 
> happened:
[several conditions]> . It took 
> me quite a while to reproduce the
> problem because it was a combination 
> of many circumstances.

The faults I run into don't require real-time circumstances; they
reflect straightforward defects in recording or interpreting the programs.

> The other bug manifested itself only if you saved 
> a notebook with user pictures in it that
> were saved after being created 
> but before they had ever been displayed.
> (Pretty hard to do.)

None of the faults I run into involve pictures.  I'm not doing
anything with pictures, nor remote controls, nor sensors.  Just
straightforward robots, trucks, bombs, birds, nests, boxes, text
(treated atomically), and numbers.  Basic stuff that should have been
working before the code went into beta test.

> That makes it very hard for professional testers to catch bugs.

It's very easy for researchers noodling around with styles in which to
use birds and nests to be stopped in their work due to overwhelming
numbers of severe defects.

> Logotron 
> now has 2 people putting in a large
> amount of time testing ToonTalk and 
> they've been having a hard time finding
> bugs in last the month or so.

Then their wages are going to waste.  If the idea is to document the
defects, Logotron had best fire those testers from the ToonTalk
project and redirect their wages into the jackpot system I suggested;
this would produce many more defect reports per Euro spent.
 
> But I find them regularly as does anyone doing a large size project.

I'm doing a very small project, and I can't get anywhere because
robots don't behave the way they're supposed to often enough to use
them to test the simplest ideas.

> Regarding the bounty idea, Animated
> Programs can't afford it but I'll 
> speak to folks at Logotron about this on my next visit.

Why wait until then?

> But I wonder how 
> many people there are that encounter bugs but don't report them but 
> would if there was such an incentive.

I would if I thought I could earn a living at it.  If the bounty were
high enough, I could, but I'm not sure how high is high enough in that
sense.  I should think the wages of the current two people who are
putting in large amounts of time would be enough.  I expect I'd earn
at least half the bounty.  My experience with various software
packages (earlier Microsoft Word, Rational Rose, for two examples) is
that even though other people don't complain, if I so much as touch
the software, it breaks.

> And how many people stop using 
> ToonTalk due to bugs but with the right
> reward system would continue.

The only thing that could make me continue using it without
compensation would be a form of mental illness.






 
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