Thats not really a bug is it?

It fits the "flawed or could require reassessment" part of the etc.

As we've seen in the past, mortal coders are clearly not hired solely to do bugs. They have heavy interaction with the producers that would still equate to more of the producers' time.

hmm, I guess.

But I would think it would be better to focus on things that are clearly broken more than things which could be debated as to what an acceptable fix would be.

Like, the fact that the political news is broken vs the "thing X which does Y would be better off if it did Z"

But its all academic anyways.

In my view, changing a construct to do something different is more of a new toy than it is a bug fix.

And they could not be hired solely to do bugs because why again? As the system works they can simply kill the accounts after bug fixes or let them stay on and do other projects later. They don't have to have "heavy interaction", believe me.

It is extremely rare we accept volunteer player coders because: 1) we have extremely high standards for coding skills (ask anyone interviewed by Roark); 2) it takes time to train a new coder (and often we don't have the time); 3) many times volunteer coders flake out after we've spent time on them (it can be more intimidating than you think!); and 4) it also takes time for new coders to come up to speed--even the most genius coder has to start slow and it can take months before they really become comfortable and familiar with the code. In other words, accepting new coders is neither easy nor casual nor even results in more bugs being resolved--indeed, it could and has backfired as LESS bugs are looked out as we've the taken time out to train someone who does little or nothing.

Obviously, adding more coders to a behind-schedule project will always speed the project along. Those of us with experience in the field have seen it work many times - just throw some more albino computer-geeks in the room with laptops!

QFT! It's basic math. If you have a project that'll take one person 400 hours, then just add 99 new people, and it'll get done in four hours. I really have no idea why more development teams don't do this.

Have you heard the story about the Coder and his boss?

The boss asked the Coder how long his project would take. He said a month, so the boss said he'd give him another 3 workers, and asked how long it would take. The coder said it would take two months. The boss got angry, and said "What if I give you 100 more coders?" The coder said "The project will never get done." It takes more than man-hours to get a project done.

QFT. Especially when the code is unlike any of the run-of-the-mill codebases out there.

The one caveat of this story is the fact that this situation is one project, whereas it could be argued that bugs are individual projects.

But that's neither here nor there.

Edit: and... Not sure if you realized, but I'd wager that Demetrios, in his usual way, was being silly and sarcastic.

I sometimes wonder how ludicrous of a statement I have to make before it's completely clear that I'm being sarcastic. Maybe we actually -do- need a special tag.



(that winking guy is to inform everyone else that my suggestion for a sarcasm tag is not an actual suggestion)

When I was one on a different IRE mud, it only took a couple meetings to get up to bug squashing capacity. I suppose it just has to do with one's aptitude for working in a CVS coding environment versus only dealing with your own code. Neither here nor there I suppose.

That is obviously such a ridiculous statement that it must be sarcasm.

I'll open up the "we need a sarcasm tag" poll right away!

This just proves that math is untrustworthy.

I assumed he was. That was the point of the post, to agree Maybe there I shoulda been clearer.

See? I wondered if that were the case. Obviously YOU need the special tag, not I.

Or both.

SARCASM and IKNOWTHISISSARCASMBUTIAMAGREEINGINANONSARCASTICMANNER.

QFT. Math has been my enemy since the days of one apple-plus-one apple-equals-two apples