My absolute favorite bug is the one where the “cancel your Amazon Music subscription” is seemingly the only one of what must be tens of thousands of UI elements in the Amazon app that simply loads a blank white screen no matter what.

What are the odds!

I’m really anal about the Quality of my own software, and tend to be hard on others’ software (doesn’t make me too popular).

> I've had multiple jobs where directors/VPs/execs/etc. sometimes ask me to evaluate something when they want an actual opinion from someone who is relatively likely to notice issues (and fix them or drive fixes for them if necessary).

I’ve had the experience where I need to be asked, and even then, if my opinion isn’t “ist güt,” it’s often ignored.

When someone makes a proposal, I tend to immediately see the potential issues, and used to point them out, and suggest workarounds or mitigation strategies, without being asked.

Not the happy path. I get accused of being “negative,” my suggestion is shitcanned, and I’m shunned.

I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut, and if the situation calls for it, start quietly preparing for when the wheels fall off.

I have also learned to never say “I told you so,” as that is a petty and vindictive statement. Doesn’t help at all.

Did I write this?

I choose tools I use, configure them, report bugs, and occasionally contribute fixes. But when I can't, I work around them, yet never get used to the workaround.

"Habitual mitigation" does not happen in me, and it's partly intentional.

I have created bad software in the past, but when I saw how people work with it, I could not be proud. Learned to look at software like a user, and don't want to unlearn that.

I believe (or maybe I hope) software will be democratized and people will start to demand good software.

> At times, I've tried to see if I can get a job somewhere where I just fix quality issues all day. This has never panned out, due to some combination of this not being a very high priority and it also not being a normal role that companies have a role for.

I'm pretty sure dedicated QA roles are a thing at many companies.

Is there also a thing called Readability blindness?

A bit of perfectionism helps with esp UI bugs. A little flash, slight unusual pause, trying different ways to break the code..

Great post. Pins the tail on the donkey. As a lifelong Unix and Linux user, when I was forced to use Windows at work, this kind of thing struck me profoundly. Windows users just didn't notice how crippling the whole experience was. They'd write it off as "user error" when Word autocapitalized strings weven if auto caps was turned off, things like that, similar to "natural running motion".

Long ago I realized I had the ability to see race conditions in source code, at least more easily/accurately than others on average. It was helpful when reviewing the code of others, esp more junior. And I once briefly considered getting a custom T-shirt made with the words "I see race conditions." (in the spirit of the famous scene from The Sixth Sense with "I see dead people.") and wearing it to the office during formal code review meetings. But a friend talked me out of it when he pointed out it might get misinterpreted as being something racist rather than having to do with threading and concurrency.

The whole "I see bugs where others do not" reminded me of that same phenomenon.

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