There was a junior in one of the early companies I worked at who claimed to have found a JVM bug. He insisted JVM handled comparison with null incorrectly. He had a String variable that was null, then he guarded against NPE with "if (str == null) return -1" followed by code that dereferenced str. The code looked innocent at first glance, but somehow it failed with NPE. Finally it turned out the string was "null" not null. :D
But I also have a good counter-example story:
Some day I found an HTTP rfc violation in one of very popular oss HTTP client libraries. I filed a bug report with detailed reproduction. It was closed immediately, with "works as designed, you misunderstood HTTP". Then we had a debate in ticket comments for many days and I couldn't convince them to the right interpretation of HTTP (I admit, the text is not easy sometimes). Finally I posted a message on HTTP mailing list and Roy Fielding confirmed I was right. They reopened and fixed.
I must say this is really hard thing to argue with somebody with an edge in experience and not come out as arrogant.
In particular - when somebody responds with "I have more experience / I've been doing it for 20 years, and you say I'm wrong?". How to best handle such cases?
>"I've been doing it for 20 years, and you say I'm wrong?" How to best handle such cases?
I wish I knew. I try to limit the discussion to the purely technical, or to barely acknowledge it as in "sure, but RFC123 says X and Y implements it that way as shown in Z".
Of course, that goes for when I'm the authority as well. I don't care who is correct, I care about what.
But I also have a good counter-example story:
Some day I found an HTTP rfc violation in one of very popular oss HTTP client libraries. I filed a bug report with detailed reproduction. It was closed immediately, with "works as designed, you misunderstood HTTP". Then we had a debate in ticket comments for many days and I couldn't convince them to the right interpretation of HTTP (I admit, the text is not easy sometimes). Finally I posted a message on HTTP mailing list and Roy Fielding confirmed I was right. They reopened and fixed. I must say this is really hard thing to argue with somebody with an edge in experience and not come out as arrogant.
In particular - when somebody responds with "I have more experience / I've been doing it for 20 years, and you say I'm wrong?". How to best handle such cases?