Maintaining a Mathematica bug list
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97349] Maintaining a Mathematica bug list
- From: Maris Ozols <marozols at gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:25:58 -0500 (EST)
Hello, Note: I moved the discussion on maintaining a Mathematica bug list to a new thread. While the number of Mathematica functions is growing exponentially, the satisfaction among the users (especially those, who have been using Mathematica for years) does not seem to increase too rapidly. The old-fashioned way Mathematica users have to submit their bug reports is incompatible with the futuristic Wolfram Alpha project. Also the claim that Mathematica "delivers unprecedented reliability" does not fit with the words such as "improvement" and "enhancement" being used to describe the recent changes, instead of calling them "bug-fixes" and documenting in a proper way. Such descriptions are appropriate only for advertising a new version of laundry detergent, not a programming language. Honestly, I think that maintaining our own list of bugs would be an act of desperation. I am not sure if that would have any impact on WRI, but it would definitely make the life much easier for Mathematica users. I do not have enough experience to set up such a thing (e.g., bug tracking system, Wiki, database, etc.). However, I believe that there are users on this forum who have such an experience. I would like to encourage Mathematica users to express their thoughts regarding whether such a step is really necessary. I am certain that WRI have enough resources to allocate for improving the communication with the Mathematica user community. I think that it is just a question of recognizing the problem and willing to solve it. Mathematica is really a great tool and we all are willing to contribute to make it even more better! > Do you know of something like this that exists > already for any other software product? Surely, most of the open source projects nowadays have their own bug tracking systems. However, it is not very common for users of proprietary software to maintain their own bug lists. Here is one example that I found on the web: The Delphi Bug List http://buglist.jrsoftware.org/ If you read this page, you can see that Delphi users had a very similar experience as we do. It is not clear though whether they succeeded or not. On their "What's New" page http://buglist.jrsoftware.org/whatsnew.htm you can see that their bug list is no longer maintained, since Borland has made available their own bug tracking system "QualityCentral". However, the supplied link http://qc.borland.com/ does not respond. Another example of a user-maintained bug list is ColdFusion Bug Hunt http://www.cfbughunt.org/ There are more examples of companies that actively encourage feedback from the user community. For example, Adobe, see Adobe Public Bug Database and Issue Reporting System http://bugs.adobe.com/ and Adobe Labs http://labs.adobe.com/about/ Even Microsoft welcomes user feedback: Microsoft Connect https://connect.microsoft.com/ ~Maris Ozols~ P.S. Here are the two most ridiculous Mathematica bugs that I know of. 1. If you are using Mathematica 6, try to evaluate this number: -1/Sqrt[(5-2Sqrt[2]-Sqrt[5-2Sqrt[2]])(5+2Sqrt[2]-Sqrt[5+2Sqrt[2]])/2] Actually WRI guys are not that evil, since this is fixed in 7.0 (I reported it on March 2007, though). I was very pleased when I found that out. Thanks! By the way, I don't know if that happened by an accident or not, but their reply to my bug report contained two interesting links: > Hello, > > Thank you for the email. > > see > > https://bugs.wolfram.com/show?number=54568 > and > https://bugs.wolfram.com/show?number=76559 Unfortunately, bugs.wolfram.com is not working, so I believe it is an internal system. So, WRI, please make it publicly available! Mathematica users would really appreciate that! 2. Open the Documentation Center and press Ctrl+Enter or Ctrl+, in the search bar at the top. I reported this for 6.0.3. Since 7.0 was released very soon, probably they didn't have time to fix this for 7.0. So, I hope it has been fixed for 7.0.1, since it should be really trivial to do this. > One thing that Mathematica users could do is to set up a Wiki where > they maintain their own list of known Mathematica bugs. Of course, > this is really what WRI should do, not us. But, here are a few reasons > why it might be an advantage for us to do so: > > * In this way Mathematica users would declare their position regarding > the way Mathematica is being developed. > > * Individuals and organizations that are considering buying > Mathematica would see that it actually contains lots of bugs and those > bugs don't get fixed. That would discourage them from buying > Mathematica and make WRI to rethink their strategy. > > * Mathematica users could check if their bugs are already known > without wasting their time to submit the bug reports. > > * It would be easier to monitor which bugs get fixed and which don't. > > ~Maris Ozols~ > Hi. I think this is a wonderful idea and would be willing to volunteer > time to help out. Do you know of something like this that exists > already for any other software product? If anyone else thinks this > would be of help please let your comments be known so the level of > interest could be gauged. I too, agree that Wolfram should already > have something like this, and would love to be able to look somewhere > and see if the bug/problem I am experiencing has already been reported > rather than waste time reporting something already known. Where would > be a good place to locate something like this? GREAT IDEA!!!! > > -Bob > Maris Ozols has made a practical suggestion, which SHOULD be discussed > further about the possibility to really implement it. > > ADL
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