Hugs not Bugs

Ok, this week my posting is a self-pitying rant, pure and simple. The topic: asking for help from software developers.

For some reason, our industry has adopted the following value: if you need help, too bad; if you found a bug, we will do all we can for you.

At least, this is how we seem to be perceived. I spend much of many of my days at work dealing with accusations of incompetence, which accusations are actually poorly-disguised pleas for help. Whenever a client or user needs my considerable analysis and analytic skills, they ask for help by accusing me of having bugs or poor design.

Yes, I have bugs and yes, I don't have a problem with bug reports. I am highly confident that I can fix any bug and I have few enough of them that I am happy to fix whatever needs fixing. I am not talking about bug reports: I am talking about something else. Here are two examples from the recent past; one is from yesterday, in fact.


Case 1: Just Fix It!

A client reports that a system of mine which is designed to create orders is failing to create orders. She knows this because my system comes complete with an built-in audit module that told her so. My system is at the start of a very long chain, going through another department in her organization and through two other vendors' systems.

• I confirm that my system generated a request to create an order, which request was acknowledged by the next system.
• The bug report is repeated, this time with a slightly ruder, slightly more accusatory tone.
• I confirm, by looking at logs that are not my own, that the request did not reach its final destination.
• I ask the intervening department to confirm that the request went through their system and out the other side.
• I confirm that the final destination has two interfaces through which the request must pass, and that I only looked at the second of those.

I am slated to continue tracking this down, through other vendor's software as configured by other people, not because this is in any meaningful sense "my" bug but because I am good at this and am being paid to do it. They need my services, I am happy to provide those services: why does the request for service have to be framed so negatively?


Case 2: Its Not Working!

In one of my professional identities, I provide technical support for a line of technical products which I designed. This gives me contact with the retail world and a sense of how my work is actually used in the real world. Most of what I learn is terrifying and makes my consulting clients seem like ever-pleasant geniuses.

I recently fielded a "bug report" that a four-year-old version of our software had mysteriously stopped working and that if there was a patch, the customer lacked it.

This is, of course, absurd on its face. I directed tech support toward a tech blog posting I had made some time ago about debugging configuration files, since this was obviously a case of misconfiguration.

The reply, as forwarded to me, was that the data had not changed, the configuration therefore was right and that the fault lay with the software.

This was ridiculous, but arguing with someone who is either this ignorant or this belligerent is a waste of time, so instead I used our excellent configuration debugging tools, which are available free for download to any of our customers, to find and fix the small issue with her configuration: Voila! it all works--or rather, it was working all along, but now her configuration matches her data.

Naturally, it turned out that this particular user was one of the few to send a thank you note, a nice thank you note, when she got the resolution. So I try to remember that not every difficult user is a troll: some of them just need help and they apparently don't know how to ask for it.