How to determine bug severity level?

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Michael,

IMO your are 100% on target. Frankly, I'm appalled at the scope and  
degree of bugginess there appears to be in the current Rev release. I  
don't see how anyone can have confidence in what they are doing as  
things  stand. Were I working with the types of apps I used to  
produce with HC, and foresaw inaccurate or lost data, I'd just throw  
up my hands and withdraw from the game. Fortunately, in the fifteen  
years my apps were in used with HC, I never had to do that. Since I  
haven't personally experienced all of the "reported" problems  
mentioned, I can still be somewhat reserved in my criticism; but not  
for long. AFAIC, even work-arounds are only acceptable on a VERY  
temporary basis. We can only make allowances for "all the great stuff  
that Rev does that can't be done any other way" for just so long. It  
appears from the temper of this list that this "so long" could become  
"adios" for some.

Joe Wilkins

On Jun 21, 2007, at 3:36 AM, Michael Binder wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> I am getting ready to report a bug.  Its my second bug, but will be  
> my first report (J Landman Gay kindly reported my first bug after  
> it was discussed on this list).
>
> I am a bit uncertain about how to rate the severity level.   
> Actually, I think I do understand how to rate the level, but I  
> disagree.
>
> My first bug was rated a minor severity level which IMO is wrong.   
> That bug, when unrecognized, caused my standalone apps to lose user  
> data (unbeknownst to the user).
>
> This new bug (see yesterday's thread: 'List fields MultipleHilites  
> property') causes my application to return bad data.
>
> Thinking about this, I WOULD RATHER HAVE MY APPs CRASH then report  
> wrong data or lose data.  (if the app crashes, at least the user  
> KNOWS that they lost data).
>
> I know that there are work-arounds for these bugs.  But many of you  
> have these bugs in your stacks, and if you haven't been been  
> affected, you're just lucky that your user didn't elicit the bug.
>
> For example: IF you have a list field set to allow multiple  
> contiguous selected lines, AND you have not incorporated Ken Ray's  
> workaround, THEN you have at least a cosmetic bug.  If you then use  
> the 'selectedlines' function to doSomething with the hilited lines,  
> then you have a serious bug. (because the lines returned by the  
> function are not the same as the hilited lines that the user  
> sees).  In my app, that resulted in my user editing data that she  
> did not intend to edit, and not even realizing the mistake.   
> Honestly, I would rather my app crash then do that.
>
> So, how would you rate this bug?
>
> By the way, IMO the solution for the rev team is a two step solution:
> First, they should quickly document these anomalies and their work- 
> arounds.  Once they are documented, they are not bugs...  They are  
> converted to enhancement requests.  Then, at their leisure, the  
> team can actually fix these things.
>
> I'll be off list for a day, but I look forward to seeing your  
> responses tomorrow.
>
> --Michael Binder
>
>