Comment 65 for bug 375148

On Wednesday 16 September 2009 02:54:08 am Daniel Holbach wrote:
> seasoned_geek: the way you are talking to Ahmed is unacceptable. It's
> clear to everybody reading this bug report that you are frustrated, but
> venting your anger does not help at all. If you have a look at
> http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct you will maybe get an idea of
> the spirit in how we work together.
>
> Ahmed spends his free time on sl-modem. If you were volunteering for a
> project, would you still enjoy helping somebody who is that mad at you?

I wouldn't volunteer for a project unless I could turn out production quality
code. I have spent over 20 years of my life writing and maintaining
production quality systems. I have even written an award winning technical
book series.

Not only would I continue to actually assist someone, had I turned out
anything this broken to a client I would have had CEOs and Vice Presidents in
my office screaming for my head.

>
> Regarding the problem of "missing prior messages": that's clearly a
> matter of taste. A lot of people actually prefer to have a look at
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sl-modem/+bug/375148 and read
> the last isolated comments to follow the conversation. Also if you have
> a good email client you can easily follow the thread without having all
> the conversation in a single email. There is no need to write in CAPS
> letters because of that. Also it's not really appropriate to expect a
> change in other people's workflow just because of one's own preferences
> or experience.

It's not a matter of taste, it is a matter of what is required to turn out
production quality code. It is both unprofessional and inefficient to be nuking
the relevant piece of a message when the things are being sent out via email.
If you want to make launchpad the one and only place, then you need to send
out "notification only" messages which have no content, just a link to go view
the new message in the thread. It is unprofessional to send a "piece" out and
force the receiver to go to another site to obtain the rest of the thread.
Had any of you worked supporting a trading floor or brokerage firm you would
have worked in an environment where it is not just a "matter of preference" it
is illegal to delete portions of support messages.

>
> sl-modem is a tricky problem and everybody appreciates your willingness
> to help out, so please try to stay calm and answer all the questions.
>

I have stayed calm. I have donated my time to solving this problem. When I
donated the majority of a weekend to working with the developer to help
diagnose this problem since it appeared they were making no progress what-so-
ever, I was given a set of instructions which were not only incomplete, they
had not been tried by the developer before sending. Even if they had worked
he would have learned nothing because he had no frame of reference to compare
my results.

This problem was then compounded by the developers insistence on deleting all
message content when responding. That makes for a lovely instruction set when
you are being given another instruction to place in the middle of a series of
instructions, but they don't give you the series or the insertion point for
the instruction.

I answer every question asked of me completely, which is more than I'm getting
in return.

We have incomplete messages, incomplete instructions, and really broken
software. Am I the only one seeing the pattern?

--
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593 (cell)
http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
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