I was literally just coming in here to comment "in before someone says this is fine and there's no issue." and the first(!) comment is effectively "this is fine and there's no issue."

The sentiment feels like software folks are optimizing for the local optimum.

It's the programmer equivalent of "if it's important they'll call back." while completely ignoring the real world first and second-order effects of such a policy.

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kace91 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've seen this in many teams and it always drives me nuts: "hey this ticket is old and we didn't bother, let's delete it to keep the board clean".

You feeling accomplished by seeing an empty list is not the goal!

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integralid 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Feeling overwhelmed by insurmountable mountain of bugs and issues is not the way either. We can argue that closing the tickets is not the best way, but if realistically nobody will ever look at them, why not make the developers feel better.

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NetMageSCW 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because it isn’t about the developers feelings, it’s about the users. Why not set aside a day or half day a week to fix those bugs instead?

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kace91 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Either you truly need to fix the bugs, in which case the feeling is good and maybe more effort should go that way (more resources assigned to it or whatever), or you're at a scale where tackling everything is impossible and you shouldn't feel overwhelmed by seeing the noise then.

But I think modern industry pretends all it's fine to convince themselves that it's ok to chase the next feature instead.

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lxgr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Move them to a deficated status. “Never triaged”, “lost”, “won’t do”, what have you.

That way, you’re at least not deluding yourself about your own capacity to triage and fix problems, and can hopefully search for and reopen issues that are resurfaced.

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groundzeros2015 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Deficated?

	▲	jerhewet 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I like this. It should be a status. "I deficated this issue. Closed."

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brigade 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s really a question of whether a team believes bugs are defects that deserve to be fixed, or annoyances that get in the way of shipping features. And all too often, KPIs and promotions are tied to the features, not the bugs.

Plus, I’ve been in jobs where fixing bugs ends up being implicitly discouraged; if you fix a bug then it invites questions from above for why the bug existed, whether the fix could cause another bug, how another regression will be prevented and so on. But simply ignoring bug reports never triggered attention.

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fweimer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it really programmers doing this, though?

These auto-closing policies usually originate from somewhere else.

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detourdog 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have been on the other side where I can't replicate/verfiy and the think the user would tell me if it was fixed. After exhausting myself and contacting the user only to find out it was resolved.

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devmor 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you are looking at it from a business perspective, there is little value to fixing a bug that is not impacting your revenue.

Of course, the developers should be determining if the bug may have a greater impact that will or does cause a problem that impacts revenue before closing it - not doing that is negligent.

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jlarocco 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Considering Apple is one of the largest companies in the world, raking in money, what consequential effects are you talking about? It certainly doesn't seem to hurt their bottom line, which is the only thing they care about.

As a software developer, I don't have any problem with this. If a bug doesn't bother somebody enough for them to follow up, then spend time fixing bugs for people who will. Apple isn't obligated to fix anybody's bug.

It's not like they were nagging him about it - it's been years, and they had major releases in the mean time. Quite possible it was fixed as a side effect of something else.

	▲	gortok 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> It certainly doesn't seem to hurt their bottom line, which is the only thing they care about. I want to draw out this comment because it's so antithetical to what Apple marketed that it stood for (if you remember, the wonderful 1984 commercial Apple created; which was very much against the big behemoths of the day and the way they operated). We're at the point where we've normalized crappy behavior and crappy software so long as the bottom line keeps moving up and to the right on the graph. Not, "Let's build great software that people love.", but "How much profit can we squeeze out? Let's try to squeeze some more." We've optimized for profit instead of happiness and customer satisfaction. That's why it feels like quality in general is getting worse, profit became the end goal, not the by-product of a customer-centric focus. We've numbed ourselves to the pain and discomfort we endure and cause every single day in the name of profit.
	▲	eszed 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		This is exactly the mindset to which GP and I object.
	▲	Barbing 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		>anybody's bug. :) Funny at first but I’m coming around to that perspective
	▲	Noaidi 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> It certainly doesn't seem to hurt their bottom line …yet