[H-GEN] Re: Unix vs NT [long; both informative and then religious]

[Anthony Towns]

On Tue, Aug 03, 1999 at 08:51:18PM +1000, Jason Henry Parker wrote:
> "Doug Young" <dougy at gargoyle.apana.org.au> writes:
> > Oh, one thing that might be interesting/helpful is a "bug log". ie, a
> > list of problems/inconsistencies/annoyances you encounter, optionally
> > categorized by where the problem lies (software, documentation, user
> > mindset) or including notes on what sort of fix would help you out.

Actually, I wrote that, not Doug Young.

> If you use debian, have a look at http://bugs.debian.org/, and
> http://packages.debian.org/packagename (eg:
> http://packages.debian.org/bash).
> Debian's bug tracking system is very good, and often has useful
> information that's not debian-specific.

These are great and all, but they're not really what I'm getting at. I mean
more things like Knuth's "The Errors of TeX", where he categorizes all his
bugs and changes and mistakes and whatever into:

Errors:
	A - Algorithms - Found a better algorithm to handle, eg, line breaking
	B - Blunders - Mistaking one variable for another, eg
	D - Data structures - Mishandling complicated data structures
		(hello UQ CS228 assignment 2 :)
	F - Forgetfullness - Forgetting to add an obvious bit of code
	L - Language - Programming languages does pointless confusing things
		(like requires you to obsessively bracket in #defines)
	M - Mismatches - Thinking the specification for a subroutine (eg)
		is slightly different to what it is. (list->head being a
		dummy node instead of the first element, eg)
	R - Robustness - Fail politely instead of crashing where possible
	S - Surprises - Global misunderstandings of how the system fits
		together
	T - Typographical - array[i] == 0 instead of array[i] = 0, eg

Enhancements:
	C - Cleanups
	E - Efficiency
	G - Generalisations
	I - Interactions - better interactivity and warnings in the event
		of errors
	P - Portability
	Q - Quality - making the typeset output prettier

Obviously these aren't all directly applicable to "maintaining a computer"
or "adminning a network", but something similar could probably be done,
with useful and interesting results.

A first pass suggestion:

Errors:
	B - Bugs - Some program doesn't behave how its docs says it should
	D - Documentation - Documentation is unclear/missing
	F - Find - The software's there, but it's impossible to find unless
		you already know where it is
	P - Paradigm - docs say how to build a house, not how to make a home
		(I can't think of a real example, but I suspect the category's
		worthwhile)
	R - Repetitive - to change my ISP I have to reconfigure a whole
		bunch of windows machines. Boring.
	S - Security - users can do things you don't want them to

Enhancements:
	C - Cleanups - reorganised system so it's easier to deal with
	I - Interactions - better interactivity and warnings for errors
		(printer out of paper gets a popup on the user's screen,
		network connectivity down beeps the admin, etc)
	Q - Quality - making more/better services available

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

 ``The thing is: trying to be too generic is EVIL. It's stupid, it 
        results in slower code, and it results in more bugs.''
                                        -- Linus Torvalds
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