Enquiring mind(s) want(s) to know...

[Griffin NoName]

Actually when I designed and programmed interfaces for clients they would always find ways of using them which I never envisaged. So necessity to build in some protective featuers to stop total misuse of an interface also may dictate some features (even though one does not exactly know what one is stopping happening )

I'm not sure if you have any idea how widespread this issue is.
...................
It's so much fun breaking software, and once you get the knack of it, it's a piece of cake. I once single-handedly managed to crash an Apple iMac (or one of those Apple ones) three times in one week. It was a record in the office.

Yes I do. I did it for a living for seven years - cured those bugs that is. I am ace at breaking s/w, I do it all the time, I am also good at complaining to approppriate s/w manufacturers - getting them to admit that the bug does exist is one of my endless missions in life. In short, I am the customer they should appreciate* but generally hate.

*testing their betas which they have put out as alphas.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I code and my babies don't have bugs, those are features...

[Griffin NoName]

When I was coding, code written during the morning, early part of afternoon, would have "features"; code written later in the day and in the evening would be entirely "feature" free. Expecting me to be in at work by 9 a.m. was just stupid.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I did not produce code with bugs.   Those places where the code did not work as expected were deliberate.   I like surprises.

<whistles>

[Bluenose]

I once wrote a program on a very short time line.  I spent a week with paper and pencil designing the program structure and testing plan before I wrote a single line of code. After three goes to get a clean compile - pesky typos etc.  I then ran the test plan.  The program passed every test.  I tried to think of further tests.  It passed those.  It went onto production without having a single change from my first clean compile.  I was sweating bricks I can tell you.  The program worked perfectly so far as I know until I left the company - obvously I have no idea what happened after that.  It was the most terrifying experience of my life!

[Roland Deschain]

Lol. "Purposeful features", eh?

I tested software professionally for 3.5 years, and even if I do say so myself, I was damn good at it, lol. It's shocking how easy it is to miss something in really complex code, or for the weirdest things to happen, such as when you think that what you've done will work, and logically it should, but then as soon as someone gets their hands on it, the thing breaks.

I've seen code released with some heinous, and also hilarious, bugs that there was no time to fix before the submission dates (third-party publisher). The attitude at some software developers, although i'd tend to say it's the publishers more often than not, appears to be that if it's broken on release, you can always patch it instead of holding back the release date.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

.... The attitude at some software developers, although i'd tend to say it's the publishers more often than not, appears to be that if it's broken on release, you can always patch it instead of holding back the release date.

Back in the DOS days of computer games, there was a particular computer game company that was notorious for doing exactly that-- and this was in the days before the intertubes-- you had to modem into their servers, at 1200 baud (or so)-- if you could get an open line, that is-- and download the patch.

Frequently?  The patch was on their server before the game hit the shelves (if the patch's date was accurate...).

I quit buying their games after awhile-- mainly because the patches were as buggy as the original release, and would break something else (while fixing something already broken).   The company had a really auspicious start, with several really well done games at the beginning.  But the rush to cash in on those excellent games made them produce garbage.  They folded, eventually.   And dammit, I cannot remember their name-- nearly 30 years? -- ago it was, I guess.

Aaah the heady days of 8 bit graphics...

[Roland Deschain]

Lol, Bob. That sounds about right. Most game patches are release day patches these days, especially for the console market, and usually when the issues are online ones. Release date is what publishers work on, so the rest falls by the wayside if it has to.

As an aside, if you've ever played the game Worms (the original), and chosen the "Team 17" team, you would have noticed a worm named "Gonz". "Gonz" was a tester on the original game, as were all the worms in that team, and I worked with him for a couple of years.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Ha!  No, I never played that one...