[wp-hackers] Fixing Bugs

[Lloyd Budd]

On 8/28/07, Geoffrey Sneddon <foolistbar at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> I am using the 2.0 branch — to me it still seems buggier than < 2
> releases were. 2.0 has some bugs that make it almost completely
> unusable for me, which despite Mark Jaquith telling me they'd be
> fixed, Ryan Boren contradicted him if not a week later. Not only are
> bugs being introduced at a quicker and quicker rate, but bugs are
> being regressed more and more often. A large majority of WP could be
> tested automatically, and badly needs to be. This has been suggested
> several times before, but nothing, to my knowledge, has ever really
> happened about it.

Woh now!

Without question you have contributed greatly to WordPress starting
and following up on important issues.

The part that catches me in your email is:
"This has been suggested several times before, but nothing, to my
knowledge, has ever really happened about it."

When I read I think instead of Mohandas Gandhi's saying "Be the change
that you want to see in the world."

Jacob Santos is an awesome example of this, recently joining the
project and doing a lot of interesting work in WordPress test
automation and other areas.

One of the biggest mistakes we could make is fixing bugs that aren't
worth fixing (now). A bug free product doesn't make it a great
product.

Another big mistake is not dealing with (the perception of) bugginess,
if it exists I don't feel that there is an undercurrent of that
perception, except as it relates to security.

The first gate is the severity/priority of a ticket and that should
reflect the impact on the experience, the impact for the customer --
whether that is a person using WordPress or a plugin developer.

A lot of the tickets don't do a great job of sharing the severity of
the issue  -- so it is harder for others to understand and care about
the ticket.

The tickets reported are often cryptic and it can be difficult to
understand the problems. Look at the comments in trac by otto42,
Robin, nazgul, markj, westi, jeremy, ryan and (who'd I miss?), they
spend a lot of time often just trying to understand the problems,
isolate the problem, and reproduce them.

(Robin's going to be greatly missed!
http://robinadr.com/2007/08/leaving_wordpress_behind)

Well written bug reports would go along way to us understanding the bugginess.

The next step is writing good patches and advocating the solutions.

Thanks,
-- 
Lloyd Budd | Digital Entomologist | | Skype:foolswisdom
WordPress.com | WordPress.org | Automattic.com


PS. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Lessons Learned in
Software Testing by Kaner, Bach, Pettichord.