How to Report a Software Defect
As a software engineer, I've had the pleasure of receiving bug reports that make no sense whatsoever, and asking for additional info leads to dead ends and frustration. I really like what Joel recommends should be on a good bug report: Steps to reproduce, What you expected to see, and What you saw instead. But I have a couple of points to add, since in my experience people skip the basics: First and foremost, test it again to make sure that it is a valid bug. Specify what is not working, and where I can find it in the program. Avoid non-standard abbreviations. Proofread the bug report before submitting it to the resolver for any ambiguous information. As I started to write this post I thought I was very clear on what I was going to write and what I wanted exactly to be in a bug report, but, as I kept typing I started to remember all those pesky bug reports that annoyed me because they take forever to research and solve (especially the ones that end up being no-bugs). If you think ...