Once we know how the software behaves, and how we want it to behave, and that these are different, what do we even mean by asking if the current behavior is a bug?
For a long time there was a culture among software developers that UI bugs were not “really” bugs. Now we are trying to lump UI bugs in with the rest of the things we call “bugs”.
This has the effect of making it much harder for our brains to create the false category you’re referring to, the category that makes us say “It’s just not very user friendly, not really a bug” and also tend to think “and thus it doesn’t have the property ‘needs-fixing’, of course!”
It doesn’t seem like a false category to me. “Bugs” to me are cases where the software behaves in a manner directly opposed to how the developer expected when he/she wrote it. UI flaws like this one are cases where the software behaves in a way contrary to how the user -wants- it to behave (in a UI context) but not contrary to how the developer intended.
They both should be fixed, and I agree that using the distinction to pretend UI flaws don’t need to be fixed is irresponsible, but I think it’s still a valid distinction to make.
Once we know how the software behaves, and how we want it to behave, and that these are different, what do we even mean by asking if the current behavior is a bug?
For a long time there was a culture among software developers that UI bugs were not “really” bugs. Now we are trying to lump UI bugs in with the rest of the things we call “bugs”.
This has the effect of making it much harder for our brains to create the false category you’re referring to, the category that makes us say “It’s just not very user friendly, not really a bug” and also tend to think “and thus it doesn’t have the property ‘needs-fixing’, of course!”
It doesn’t seem like a false category to me. “Bugs” to me are cases where the software behaves in a manner directly opposed to how the developer expected when he/she wrote it. UI flaws like this one are cases where the software behaves in a way contrary to how the user -wants- it to behave (in a UI context) but not contrary to how the developer intended.
They both should be fixed, and I agree that using the distinction to pretend UI flaws don’t need to be fixed is irresponsible, but I think it’s still a valid distinction to make.
Possibly, what set of things we can expect next time we hear “bug”?