RE: [Bug-gnubg] Resign bug

[Ric]

Joseph,

It's too bad you feel you have to be rude and arrogant in responding to a
legitimate user concern. I have said many times in various places that I
think gnubg is a great program. Nothing has changed my mind.

I will say this: I did not say that "any deviation... from human expectation
is a bug." If you're going to try to insult me with my own words, at least
use the correct ones. My comments were a bit more complex than your
restatement of them. I leave it up to the rest of the gnubg community to
decide if they are valid or are off the mark.

My intent was to offer a useful general criticism by presenting a user's
view of software, more specifically an interface issue, not to denigrate or
demean the vast and talented effort that has gone into gnubg.  

As for continuing the discussion, no, I don't feel like being part of a
discussion where I am so totally and obviously and demeaningly wrong. I can
always get that from Murat over at rgb. 

Ric 

BTW I have Snowie 3 Pro. I didn't spring for Snowie 4 because I consider
gnubg an equal if not superior program.



-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Heled [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 8:55 PM
To: Ric
Subject: Re: [Bug-gnubg] Resign bug


I suggest you go and get snowie then. I don't feel like starting a 
discussion where you are wrong. This is open source. If you don't like 
how the program works, change it and start your own branch.

While you are supposedly using polite words, I take such "user 
responses" as insulting nonsense.
Many users have useful input and we listen to them all. but "any 
deviation of GNUbg from human expectation is a bug" is crap.

-Joseph


Ric wrote:
> Albert's response sums up the situation quite well, I think. Another 
> consideration is one of trust: if a programmer shortcuts in such an 
> obvious way, or any manufacturer cuts a corner on his product, can the 
> customer/client really trust the rest of the program or product? The 
> client will always wonder what else was given short shrift.
> 
> The expectation of the user in the case of Gnubg is that the program 
> will play the game the way a human would (a really really smart human, 
> but a human nonetheless), which in the case I mentioned means that gnu 
> will take both men off in that situation and thus end the game. Any 
> other action must be considered a bug by the user, because the program 
> didn't behave as the user expected and the user cannot know if the 
> action is truly a bug or simply lazy programming that doesn't affect 
> the outcome. In fact, the two rational responses of the user would be 
> to 1. report a bug, and 2. start looking through his game files to see 
> where else the program screwed up his results. So the programmer's 
> time is wasted in answering this kind of bug report, and the user 
> wastes time looking for an error that isn't really there.
> 
> Users don't think like engineers or programmers. Too often programmers 
> & engineers don't bother to think like users (early IBM manuals are a 
> classic case). Here's the case where the programmer apparently 
> believed he didn't have to follow through on the game action for the 
> user because the programmer could say to himself "The result is the 
> same so it doesn't matter that the program doesn't act the way the 
> user expects it to act." The immediate results of that thinking: time 
> wasted for everyone, and reduced trust in the product.
> 
> So on a deeper level, yeah, it's a bug.
> 
> Ric
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Heled [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 7:26 PM
> To: Ric
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Bug-gnubg] Resign bug
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ric wrote:
> 
>>  
> 
> 
>>Also, note the 12 roll near the end of Bug_move32. Here gnu with a man
>>on his ace and a man on his deuce takes only one chequer off.
> 
> 
> Why is that a bug? Both moves have the exact same result.
> 
> -Joseph
> 
> 
> 
> 
>