>Jim,
>
>I'm curious. Do you report all of your bugs to your clients? I don't. However, when they report them to me (the ones I don't find <g>) I fix them; but I don't always get them right back out to the clients for delivery/scheduling reasons.

I pretty much have to 'report' them all Doug, given that what I write is for internal usage only (not product-type applications for general sale). In fact I really 'accept' them, acknowledge them, then fix them. Also, I don't really have delivery/scheduling problems like you do.

>
>Isn't that what Microsoft is doing and isn't that what we all do, including you and Steve?

First, I think MS is in a distinctly different league than virtually any VFP developer, regardless of the applications VFP developers make.
Secondly, I'm readily accepting that bug-free software, though it should always be the goal, is hardly possible today, especially for the products that MS sells generally. Most of ours should be significantly easier to render *near* bug-free. Acknowledging that, it follows real clearly in my mind that if one doesn't make bug-free software then they owe the purchasers prompt advice on bugs qs they are identified.
Why is it that Fox Software's success with this approach is totally ignored and counted for nothing...because it was 9 years ago???? Have people changed that much in so short a time????...in the VFP market????

>
>I'm just afraid that as a direct result of what appears to be a need for folks to 'win' this discussion that we've all kind of lost our perspective. No one being 'right' or 'wrong' but attempting to take what is essentially the process of software development and turning it into some sort of absolute.

I very much would like to "win" an improved approach by MS as regards reporting of bugs in VFP to the VFP community. I hardly think this qualifies as tampering with the process of software development, nor is it trying to make anything an "absolute". Frankly, I am most perplexed that people actually come forward to defend the current practise by MS as regards VFP bug reporting/publication. I seriously thought that virtually everyone except Craig B. would acknowledge that this is a serious problem and would suggest tacks to get the situation improved.

>
>I don't know about you or anyone else but one of my biggest headaches is dealing with one individual in our organization who is simply unable to see that software development is a process. He always wants "bottom line" answers and I can't always give them. As such I suspect he sees me as somehow trying to deceive him when that's the last thing I want to do. I see him as unwilling to look at the facts simply because it will cause him to step outside of his bottom-line mentality.

I've faced one or two of those in my day. Very difficult indeed.

>
>I'm sure we've all dealt with these kinds of individuals.
>
>My users certainly get frustrated when bugs show up, that's for sure. In my case I'm dealing with eleven years of legacy code, written by about 20 different programmers, none of which it seems knew anything whatsoever about commenting code <g> (with a few minor exceptions). We have some 2500 people using the product in various releases, almost all of which were not tested before delivery. What I am doing is personally or having my staff fix them as fast as is possible (I call this the triage phase <g>) so we can generally stabilize the product enough (we're there now) so I can go back and totally re-engineer the product from the ground up - this time creating documentation. Even so we still get errors. Untill I can get our software refactored into something that at least resembles a product that has actually been engineered I have to live with what I have.

I had one of these in my career. Just got things to where components were cleaned up, somewhat optimized and reasonably documented when the company went bankrupt!#@#!#@

>Remember, inside of Visual FoxPro 7.0 is FoxPro 6.0, 5.0, 3.0, 2.5a, 2.5, 2.0, FoxBase + 2.10, FoxBase 2.0 and FoxBase 1.0
>code. The operating environment that this product has had to work with is quite wide and varied. I think that the developers have done a great job being able to both move the product forward for the some eighteen years of its existence with as few problems as they do indeed have.

I fully agree.

>I cannot in my mind justify criticizing them in as harsh a fashion as I've seen some do.

Clearly, I can. Not right out of the gate, but after it has been "earned". In the case of bug reporting and bug lists, I started out months and months ago simply asking for changes. Tone changed as the situation didn't. I think many people react similarly.
And I'm certainly not going to let some fear of MS discontinuing VFP to rule what I say about the product. Nothing that I say or do is going to make a whit of impact on any decision MS might make as regards the future of VFP, and those who are afraid to criticize based on this worry are simply being stupid in my opinion.

>Now, Microsoft itself may,as a result of their corporate policies be adding to the troubles rather than reducing them but as far as I can see they've pretty much let the FoxPro developers have their way with developing the product and I will absolutely assert that we have a far better product now than Clipper or dBASE, our old competitors. Where are they these days in the great scheme of things? We're still here, being developed (VFP 8 is on the way, remember?) with at least a good ten years of time to keep plying our skills. Will we always be in the forefront? Nope, not even now though VFP can do some things other
>products can only dream about.

Again I agree.
You may find this hard to believe, but the reason that I am so forceful on some key issues as regards VFP is that I find it so useful/practical and I want it to get better.

>
>So, I know about the struggles first hand and this seems to make me more appreciative of the efforts of Microsoft and I guess you as well are taking. I don't really know what kind of software you write or whether you write vertical market apps or what you have done but I'm sure it's comparable. What or whom do you develop software for? What industries? I seem to recall that you've been doing this for a long long time though. Have you always been a code jockey or management or both?

First part answered at top. I've been just about everything in the DP/MIS/IS business since I started in 1968, from trainee to senior management. I have found my niche in database design and delivering applications to users. I get great satisfaction form these things, including exposure to the business end of the businesses I work with.

>
>Regardless, I keep coming back to this notion that we do not live in the kind of world where everything is always the way it ought to be and I think that sometimes we make ourselves more frustrated because of the internal conflict between our desires for a perfect world and the reality that this isn't it. <s>

True enough, but VFP is really a small part of the world and bug reporting an even smaller part of that. VFP is a larger part of my world, but not the largestpart.

>
>I think somewhere here is an acceptable tradeoff between the two points of view.
>
>What justifies all the fuss??

It's all very simple...
Yesterday I compiled a list of about 75 bugs that have been reported here on UT regarding VFP7, since VFP7 came out. Less than a handful have KB articles for them and NONE are noted anywhere in a MS site that is generally accessible.
This means that there are literally thousands of people out there who experience these bugs and have to spend lots and lots of time diagnosing their code for one or more of these bugs [for instance, I spent a whole morning determining that there was a bug in ATC(), it being one of the last items I decided to check because it is such an old function....
Were there some regularly update list of bugs that I could review periodically then I would have been aware of a bug in ATC() and it would have been high on the list rather than low].
Tightly related is the bug reporting facility that offers no area to include (reporter) contact information and states categorically that non-reporducible bugs will not be handled. As we have witnessed right here (UT), even with direct contact it sometimes takes 3-5 communications in order to achieve reproducibility at the MS end. This is a product of the complexities of both the general operating environment and of VFP itself.
Is it really asking too much for MS (VFP Team in particular) to find some way to let the submitter learn that the bug s/he submitted has not been reproducible and so is not acknowledged?????? Is it even reasonable for MS to do anything else but????

I hope this clarifies my position on this issue. I think that it is very important to get this untenable situation fixed.

Jim

SNIP