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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

I know how this line of defense plays out with my customers if their customers' browsers segfault on a page I wrote...

I fix the page ASAP to prevent the segfault and then file a bug to the browser developers. If I don't, I lose the customer and somebody else will fix the page anyway, maybe not filing the bug because it doesn't make money.

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Just how do you "fix a segfault" in your page? Do you immediately replicate the user's exact computing environment, all down to the specific operating system and perhaps browser plugins which might contribute, install a specific version of the this obscure browser (Conkeror?) with debug symbols, fire up GDB and understand why the complex C++ crashed based on the core dump?

That seems like an unlikely amount of effort. IME If you have some "enterprise" tool with enterprise clients, there's typically going to be a list of browsers which are supported and tested by QA.

Having been in similar situations, I think he means that he does indeed replicate the bug (which isn't usually as bad as you make it sound) and then write different code that doesn't trigger that bug in the browser.

It isn't always possible, and in that case we do blame the browser in the end, but it usually is possible to work around it. It's ugly, but it's necessary to keep your customers happy.

I'd rewrite the page in a way that it doesn't trigger the bug. Trial and error, not the nicest of the days.

For one customer in a sea of thousands doesn't seem too worth it in my opinion

My customer is the one who runs the site, not the ones who browse it.

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