Re: Maintaining a Mathematica bug list
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97390] Re: [mg97349] Maintaining a Mathematica bug list
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:20:07 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Mathematics & Statistics, Univ. of Mass./Amherst
- References: <200903110925.EAA01644@smc.vnet.net>
- Reply-to: murray at math.umass.edu
There's some trouble with the whole idea of a user-maintained "bug list" for such a proprietary product: one person's bug is another person's feature; yet another person's bug is a failure to understand the documentation or the core language. So such a bug list could be counterproductive unless a real expert served as referee. Maris Ozols wrote: > 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 > -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305
- References:
- Maintaining a Mathematica bug list
- From: Maris Ozols <marozols@gmail.com>
- Maintaining a Mathematica bug list