Mark Mielke <mark_at_mark.mielke.cc> writes:
>On 01/04/2010 06:46 PM, Karl Fogel wrote:
>> "Hyrum K. Wright"<hyrum_wright_at_mail.utexas.edu> writes:
>>> Because we are a large and mature project, there is also a certain
>>> amount of maintenance cost just to maintain parity with ourselves and
>>> other SCM systems. Our ever-increasing list of outstanding issues
>>> witnesses to the fact that we aren't very good at maintaining that
>>> parity.
>>>
>> The ever-increasing list of outstanding issues reflects a large user
>> base, most likely :-). I'm not saying SVN shouldn't implement features
>> from other VCSs where appropriate, but don't take the growth of the bug
>> database as a bad thing -- bug growth corresponds to users.
>
>I think this is only true in the sense that more users have a better
>chance of exposing existing problems. (Assuming the 'bugs' are actual
>bugs' and not feature requests)
>
>More bugs means more technical debt, which means less efficiency for
>the entire project over time. At some critical point, the product
>developers spend 100% of their time addressing defects and work
>arounds, and 0% of the time improving the product.
>
>Killing technical debt can be very important in terms of enabling
>features to be developed.
I'm *totally* trolling now, and I'll own up to it... While I actually
agree with a lot of what you've written in this thread, I think this
conflation of bugs with tech debt is a mistake. They're not the same
thing at all. I almost wrote that in a reply, but then realized that
I'd seen this often enough that -- help me, I have truly gone to the
dark side -- I thought it might be worth a blog post. So:
http://www.rants.org/2010/01/10/bugs-users-and-tech-debt/
It would only be proper to flame me there, I suppose :-).
Seriously: I don't think the SVN project, or any other project, should
treat the bug list as tech debt. It's not.
Best,
-Karl
Received on 2010-01-17 08:56:12 CET