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#debugging

georgehank@pluspora.com
Jürgen Erhard

A wish

I wish all devs would refrain from “solutions” like (the below is in the context of games, obvs, but it’s a general problem):

Try restarting Steam
Please verify your files
Please try removing mods (if you use them)
Please try turning off steam cloud
Try exclusive window mode
Try running the game using safe mode option (no mods)
Try resetting your game settings

Because this is just wild stabbing in the dark, not fixing anything. Imagine you bringing your car to the shop (the game these “fixes” are for is Car Mechanic Simulator 2018) and them just whacking at different parts of the engine in hopes that’ll “fix” it. Lists like this just mean that you have no actual idea what’s going on. But it’s your code, you should know, or at least know how to debug this.

“Try restarting your router” is an other favorite. You have no clue, but are too chicken to even admit that!

#debugging #cms2018 #carmechanicsimulator #gamedev #softwaredev #bugs #fixing #knowing-not-guessing
#repost-with-hashtags #we-will-never-get-editing-of-posts

1 Comments
eds@pluspora.com
Ed S

A nice catalogue of low-hanging fruit which no-one had picked...

The fix was a few lines of code to stop traversing after twenty navigation nodes, presumably saving a few million dollars in server and power costs. I didn’t find this bug by looking at the monitoring graphs, but anybody who looked at them could have.

Bottom line:

...it wasn’t until this last bug that I realized I needed to move on to a different company.

#debugging
#softwareengineering
#nobodycaresaboutquality

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