Survey posted 2005-11-07 04:42 by Jon.

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This is probably the best survey idea yet.

Hopefully, for the programmer's sake, nobody would write a review that focused on bugs. Give the author a chance to correct his efforts prior to writing a public review. Contact him (or her) directly via email or by means of a forum if available.

I should not have to comment on the 3rd choice... but we could possibly rename that as "gossip." Usually, nothing goods comes from gossip. Try contacting the author as previously stated.

For the 5th choice... Hmmmmm... That is just plain lazy. Authors spend numerous hours, days, or even years working on programs for free. You could help us out by giving us out by giving us some constructive feedback.

Authors do not want buggy programs. It can be very difficult task for any one person to create a completely bug free program. But, with the help of others, it can be done.

Thanks to all who have helped out with any program.

<<This is probably the best survey idea yet.>>

Thanks, I came up with it all by myself.

"I stalk the programmer and bitch-slap them." ;-P

When it's in BASIC, I'd try to fix the bug myself, but when it's in assembly, I just delete the program (Unless the source code is given, in which case I look around for a while futily, then give up 30 minutes later) =P

Yeah, that's pretty much what I do as well. BASIC programs are easy enough to debug. ASM is a whole different story (and since I'm not so great at ASM, debugging other people's programs is not one of my skills at the moment...)

of course, unless the BASIC program's coding is like, 9000+. Then I'm way too lazy to debug it. Plus, a buggy program shows that the author obviously doesn't care enough about it to thoroughly debug it, so why should I?

Not necessarily.. the author may have just looked over this bug while he was debugging some other code in the program. It usually takes me around 3-4 complete look-overs of the whole program just to make sure there are no bugs. Even then, there are still small little bugs.. what I'm trying to say is that just because a program contains a few bugs, that doesn't mean the author "doesn't care enough about it".

their could be some situation that didn't result on the authors calc. maybe different hardware or different combinations of programs.

Maybe with assembly programs, but I don't think that should be an issue with BASIC programs. For example, BASIC programs made on an 84+ SE should still run on an 83, so long as no 84+ specific tokens are used.

the new 89T OS is all f***ed up so if it was an 89 i wouldn't be suprised with a bug
but other than that i put "i havent downloaded a buggy program" because i usually only download progs that have pics or reviews. most bugs on my 89 have been hardware related(line 1111 or what ever, memory stuff) and they have all been fixed with a combonation of hw3patch and 3.01
so i guess i do fix bugs... what ev. i lie givin the programmers the cred cause im not smart to program

neither am i smart enough to speak english

*idea* there should be an [edit post] button so that this would one instead of 3 posts.....

or i could be less retarded....

Actually, if you use the calculators full capabilities when writing a program.... it isn't so backwards compatible :-(
Few programs I've needed to alter because of that.

Right, sometimes I've been working so hard on fixing a certain bug that I don't notice another one, or I realize that I've released a program with a bug that makes it unusable, so I try to release a fixed version as quickly as possible, rush through testing it, and don't notice a bug that the bugfix caused.

Some bugs only arise in very specific situations, which the author may not account for and simply may not come accross in his own tests. For example, a tile-based rpg is made, a single wall tile may have a bad value in an obscure place and the player can walk through it and get to places he isn't supposed to. The author can't really be held responsible for not spending so many hours running into every wall and walking over every tile to make sure it works, so the game is released and someone finds it. If I were that author I'd appreciate it if people mentioned that to me so I could fix it and potentially fix all related problems once it's brought to my attention. Perfect debugging is virtually impossible.

Besides, this is sort of a programming community. It's not like it's a pain for any of us to help our fellow programmers out. That's the benefit of programming here. It's free and open, so we can always make updates. It's not like we're getting games published and once it's done once it's done forever.

if a proggramer spends weeks proggraming, debugging, testing, etc. it doesnt matter how many bugs a program has, the auther stil put time and effort into giving to people for free. plus, there are some really weird bugs that (at least seem like) they cant be fixed. for example, in a stat-entering system i have it outputs the xp next to where you input various stats. for some reason, (even though it has no commands to write over the text in the whole program) if you go back to change a number in your input, it clears the text.

I bet there's a lot of old content that isn't maintained very well where contacting the authors might not do much good.

I've contacted authors when I've make significant fixes/optimizations. If you contact authors about a bug then make sure to tell them exactly what you did to cause the problem and if you were able to reproduce it. If you fix the bug then consider sharing the fix with the authors. The more people who do this the less likely you'll be to encounter bugs. :)

I completely agree with both of your points.

I was thinking on the lines of more recently released programs. I guess if an author is not maintaining the program anymore, the user is on their own. Still, make a good faith effort to contact the author.

Yeah, it probably is.

I've seen some of the very old ones, they're just dumb. They're like "What gender are you", "Do you own a calculator", or stuff that isn't calculator based whatsoever.

"Do you own a calculator?" is very calculator based(notice how calculator is in the question).

keyword is "or", he wasn't referring to that specific example

Oh, oh, kay, kay, gotcha, gotcha.

To be fair... "'Do you own a calculator'" and "stuff that isn't calculator based" are actually separated by an "or" in the original post. Hence, they are separate ideas and do not necessarily rely upon one another.

i said it first i win

NO, I WIN!