On: The open source paradox

[brigandish]

If you've got tests then you've already seen how many stupid mistakes you make, long before release. To get that far and still not have learnt enough humility to accept there may be more is quite the achievement!

[KSteffensen → brigandish]

Catching a bug while testing is clever. You wrote a good test. Getting a bug report is stupid. You made a mistake, didn't catch it while testing and actually published it for others to see how stupid you are.

[brigandish → KSteffensen]

Do you know of a single programmer who has written a program of any but the absolute lowest complexity that is entirely bug free upon release?

[memorysafety → brigandish]

Yes, I'll claim that such programs do exist. But it's rather hard for a human to notice those; beware of survivorship bias.

Having said that, I still support the sentiment that most code is buggy. It's futile to expect pervasive perfection.

[KSteffensen → brigandish]

I didn't mean imply that releasing buggy code was stupid. This happens, of course it does. And it not necessarily stupid

I was trying to give a reason why people, myself included, don't learn the humility you refer to.

[brigandish → KSteffensen]

I see, thanks for the clarification and my apologies for assuming the worst - maybe I've come to expect the kind of hubris I thought you were displaying because, all too often, programmers actually do display it. Just the other day I had one comparing himself to a doctor in an emergency ward, heroically saving bleeding victims, because he deigns to contribute to open source. This justifies treating the writers of bug reports with disdain, of course.

Nice to know it's not endemic!