The downside of writing user interfaces is that you always get blamed for all faults, regardless of where the fault actually lies.
The downside of writing user interfaces is that you always get blamed for all faults, regardless of where the fault actually lies.
Upgraded client yesterday, got mail today:
Client: Found a bug in the latest build, "Quantity delivered" is zero for order 10011.
Me: That's odd, let me check... ah the file we're getting from your other system has zero in the "quantity delivered" field.
Upgraded client yesterday, got mail today:
Client: Found a bug in the latest build, "Quantity delivered" is zero for order 10011.
Me: That's odd, let me check... ah the file we're getting from your other system has zero in the "quantity delivered" field.
Exactly. And besides, you're responsible for the bad coffee on his desk
ReplyDeletetoo.. ;-)
Jean-Marc Kiener Fortunately I've not met that bad clients yet :P
ReplyDeleteI actually had a customer who said: "I know it is not your fault, but your support is much better."
ReplyDeleteUwe Raabe We get that a lot, which is actually something I'm quite proud of, although it can be frustrating too!
ReplyDeleteIt is all part of business dealing with clients to keep them happy and to continue to use your software, otherwise they can always find someone else.
ReplyDeleteI guess no one ever ran into the user who calls to inform you that the monitor is all dark, after a few minutes, you tell them to check if they turned it on, fixed the problem for the day.
True story.
I know lots of IT support people. True story. Secretary to the President of a major Chicago region pharmaceutical company called to say his PC wouldn't power on. Reason: The power strip that provided power to the PC and peripherals was plugged into itself (rather than the wall outlet.) I have lots more stories. It's just the nature of the support function. Many times, however, it's not just user ignorance or laziness. It's a real problem.
ReplyDeleteRichard Baroniunas True, more often than not we're the ones who have to deal with issues in the integration, rather than the offending party. Especially true if the other side is running on some big iron.
ReplyDeleteWe've got one integration which is doing CSI Miami level data reconstruction just because the other side never felt like giving us key fields.
Then again we do have a lot of satisfied customers :)
A user doesn't see all the chewing gum and bailing wire needed to integrate with third party software. All they see is the error message emanating from the client UI. As far as they know that's where it originated.
ReplyDeleteTo go to the other side of the fence, I have seen programmers do the following:
ReplyDelete1. Change code and send it back to the client without fully testing it.
2. Change code on a machine that has all of the software tools but fail to test it on a clean machine. Oh we missed that DLL during the setup, sound familiar.
3. Finally, a programmer who says I do not do maintenance but only rewrite the entire code because I write perfect code. Yea right.
I got a call to solve a problem, where Windows didn't do it's signature Ding sound... three hours later, after tested and try every thing in the book, we detect and solved the issue, turned on the speakers... it was fantastic, like magic!
ReplyDeleteRichard Baroniunas writing perfect code .... before mentioning me you have to ask :D
ReplyDeleteUwe Raabe always. It seems all bigger companies simply can not provide support. The downside is it's difficult sometimes to charge properly when you have to "barge in" and fix things for other vendors. Asbjørn Heid had some big laughs when integrating with some "big" ones. One company did not do "hacks", i.e. "Microsofts reader works that way, so it's ok". Me: but it's contrary to specification and logic! Them: "Pity". Bah!
ReplyDeleteI once reported 17 bugs for a system to which my clients were supposed to report. 5 of them was on the fact that if you followed the spec and used "false" or "true" in you XML the boolean values would get negated (!). But it did work if you used 0 or 1. So 1 = false and 0 = true. After 1½ years the system owner "discovers" this and tries to have all the reporting clients use 0 and 1 (for the reporting due in three days) AND claiming that they have found a solution to a problem that could not be foreseen.
When i re-sent my 16 months old bug report they took me off the mailing list :)
End of rant...
What really stinks in today's market is the vast amount of players. A developer has to keep up with selling applications (depending on target market) that possibly work on Androids, iOS, Windows 7 or 8 or 10, Windows Phones (haven't had a huge need on this), the web, I can go on and on.
ReplyDeleteThis always brings up testing a product before sending it out. How is your testing environment do you let others test it for you, is the testing environment always cleaned before releasing.
Keep in mind the amount of updates that occur on Macs or Windows, that easily could screw a application up.
So a developer has to be able to keep a checklist when speaking to a client about their system and type of problem that is occurring.
There was one thread that spoke about Norton Anti-Virus blocking the download because it was tagged as a virus. I tested it for them and it did not occur at my location. They told me they thought it was put on the safe list by Norton but we all know that it takes longer then 2 days for that to occur.
"Keep in mind the amount of updates that occur on Macs or Windows, that easily could screw a application up."
ReplyDeletePersonally i have had more problems with auto-updates of software i have been more or less forced into integrating with. Security updates to MS Office comes to mind at the first and foremost.
Office is out since a couple of years back! No Late or Early COM talk to the apps any more. To much hazzle. Rather than providing a plugin or batch function for Outlook, i synchronize my clients data with their exchange and then they can happily continue in an Office-only environment.
That's just one example of a host of alternate and non-locked in solutions to stuff the last decade or so.
One 1 to OOXML (docx, xlsx, pptx) makes it possible to manipulate Office files without firing up the suite itself.
Oh and out in the http-world i suspect this will begin again for earnest. People build apps on Google, Netflix and other free APIs out there and suddenly the API has been decommissioned or just gone...
Anyway - all part of the rap these days...