March 5th, 2019

Alternate definitions for English words, as inferred from bug reports

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Here are some terms that appear in bug reports.

  • “Empty” means “There are a bunch of things here, but not the ones I wanted.”
  • “Blank” means “There are things, maybe.”
  • “The picture is wrong” can mean practically anything, including possibly “The picture is right.”
  • “It didn’t work” can also mean practically anything, including possibly “It worked.”

One of my colleagues works on video drivers. He pointed out that when there’s a bug of the form “… and then I get a black screen,” there’s a decent probability that the bug will include a screen shot.

You can imagine what the screen shot looks like.

At least it compresses well.

Category
Old New Thing
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Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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