In the past I've worked with a number of programmers who've hidden their bugs. What I mean by that is that they know they are there, don't fix them, don't put them in a tracking tool of any kind, and won't fix them unless a tester finds it and logs it. I've even worked with a guy who once said things like, "You've only found three of the seven bugs that I know of."

It was about a month into that job that I started wondering how many paper cuts from a post-it note someone could take before... oh never mind.

For some people, it's a shell game. I have a hard time understanding their logic. When I write code I don't like it when people find bugs in my code, but I don't hide it. I still want the feedback, even if I don't like it. I just can't understand that mindset.

When you find a developer who logs their own bugs, tells you where to look because they suspect they haven't found everything there is to find in a certain part of their code, or who helps you take a good bug and make it a great on (by exposing a more important issue) - thank them. For me, they make the job easier. They make me feel like it's a partnership, not a competition or a zero-sum game.

Through the power of Google alerts (I love Google alerts), I stumbled across this fantastic quote in an article titled Insatiable Software:

Equipment manufacturers are constantly upgrading software that controls those onboard computers to, uh, 'enhance" their performance. (Those "enhancements" might also repair glitches and bugs, overlooked during design and testing, that have popped up in the software. But we could be arguing about semantics...)

How great is it that a blogger for an agriculture website knows enough to call shenanigans on how we as an industry spin software patches. I also found a similar story titled Beta is Dead which also calls shenanigans on five-year beta programs.

Now, excuse me as I go fix some bu... I mean enhance my website.