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Comment by formerly_proven | Hacker News Reader

For some people their code are like their kids; precious and they can do no wrong. These tend to be a problem when bugs crop up, because bug reports are like a personal insult to them.

Personally, I've long held the view that practically all code is buggy one way or another and that many things can mean throwing code away is the best way forward, so one just shouldn't be attached to a few bytes. One should rather feel attached to the project at hand, which then naturally results in one trying to improve it, which means bug reports are GOOD and EXCELLENT because they give very clear hints were the project can be improved.

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I think it's also that people don't like feeling stupid, and most bugs are stupid mistakes, so having one pointed out can make you feel stupid.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

> These tend to be a problem when bugs crop up, because bug reports are like a personal insult to them.

I got over that a few decades ago.

> bug reports are GOOD and EXCELLENT because they give very clear hints were the project can be improved.

Absolutely. And fixed bug reports go into the test suite so they never darken anyone's door again.

> For some people their code are like their kids; precious and they can do no wrong. These tend to be a problem when bugs crop up, because bug reports are like a personal insult to them.

Maintainers that have that attitude just shouldn't have public bug trackers that anyone can submit to. If they choose to do so anyway, and react poorly to legitimate bugs that are respectfully presented, that's on the maintainer, not the reporter.

It's "natural" to feel this way - that the product is "yours" somehow.

But it's smarter to realize you don't own the software; you own your skill at making software.

Viewed this way, every bug report is an opportunity to improve your skill.

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