News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by aaronbrethorst on Monday March 14, 2016 @10:17PM (#11287016)
Yay, Apple, for opening up quite a bit. Boo, Apple, for including such a thing as this in any webpage ever:

    Radars: rdar://problem/19705854
I really, really, really hope that Apple opens up Radar a la Microsoft Connect, and soon. It is stupendously frustrating to have an issue with an Apple product and run headlong into the brick wall of Radar.
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by drakenot on Monday March 14, 2016 @10:31PM (#11287060)
If you listen to episode 146 of The Talk Show, John Gruber brings up this exact point to Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi (question starts at 48:15):

https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/02/12/ep-146

Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by mikeash on Monday March 14, 2016 @10:42PM (#11287086)
What did they say?
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by drakenot on Monday March 14, 2016 @10:58PM (#11287157)
Gruber brought up how in Apple Maps, if you suggest a correction, you are eventually informed when the fix is made.

However, with Radar, it is just a blackhole. You file your report and an awful lot of bugs, no matter how well written or even if they have example code, they will never hear back again about it.

He said that this was a negative feedback loop because developers will end up submitting less bugs because of this lack of communication.

Craig said that they aren't where they want to be with the "external interface" of Radar. They use Radar heavily internally but they face challenges with Radar and the general public.

He expressed that the Radars are read, but then the process is usually that they are duped with some internal Radar issue. Then they struggle with how to externally communicate what release a particular bug will be fixed in, or to make particular promises about certain bugs, etc.

But he reiterated that they had really fallen short on providing a good tool with feedback for the general public.

Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by mikeash on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @09:13AM (#11289325)
Thanks! I'm glad they're aware of the trouble. I just hope they don't "fix" it worse like with that big UI revision they did a few years back.
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by Someone on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @03:27AM (#11288045)
It's bad, but not quite a black hole. I have had the occasional feedback out of it, of the limited form "this should be fixed in the release that just came out. Please retest"
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by lostlogin on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @04:14AM (#11288189)
I enjoy the "duplicate, closed" that never gets fixed.
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by mikeash on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @09:14AM (#11289333)
Trouble is, that "please retest" message is boilerplate that's often sent out regardless of whether any work is done in the offending area.
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by makecheck on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @09:12AM (#11289322)
Well, perhaps they could start by looking at a feature of their own OS, introduced by Federighi himself (yet nothing new regardless): Tags.

If they simply started tagging things internally in some way that associates issues with external things like bug numbers and release numbers, they would have a start toward communication with the outside of the company.

Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by taspeotis on Monday March 14, 2016 @10:11PM (#11286998)
I know this isn't quite the same vein, but I enjoy articles about "why you think you want X but it works like this because Y".

Raymond Chen is particularly good at writing them [1] [2].

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20110907-00/?p=...

[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20160216-00/?p=...

Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by tyrankh on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @09:28AM (#11289412)
It's telling of Swift that Apple feels a need to defend the many weird things they did with it.
Re:Rationales for Swift standard library designs by mcphage on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @03:03PM (#11292156)
I don't follow—what does it tell? That it does in fact have weird things in it? Or that some of the weird things aren't accidental?