Please please please improve error reporting

[yuri]

I didn't suggest to log more. Printing trace was suggested for one-off debugging of issues like when you said you needed to modify code to find out the issue.

From our experience, I'd suggest to strive to have as little errors as possible (not notices, but real errors). Then, you won't have problems to find a specific reported error.

[yuri]

BTW. Speaking about enterprise level. These are accompanied with paychecks like x10 - x100 of what we charge.

[jamie]

yeah i think its a balance to what to report but having more options would be amazing expand the reach of your application much wider and just saying i am not running the system correctly (unless you want to come here and fix it for me) is VERY unhelpful

well keep listening to your customers and you might get there one day, but don't listen to your customers and you never will

here is a tip insted of just saying "we don't do that" try saying "interesting idea, we shall think about it" or "i can see how that could be useful, but we don't have the capacity to impalement that at this time" this makes your customer feel heard in a polite way not just disregarded or worse insulted

you have a great product that could be an amazing platform just need to to open up to other ideas

have you thought about polling your customers to see what features they want?

[yuri]

The thing is for 12 years I barely have wrote any insulting comment or even resorted to sarcasm here.

I'm just being genuine when I say we won't do this. Because we had more than 10 years to think out about the problem. Whenever we get a request, it's usually already well thought out before. Saying automatic no – is not an off-hand answer, but based on experience.

Being not genuine is not normal for me. If I really sure that we unlikely will implement a feature, I will tell it directly.

[yuri]

Please appreciate my time here too. I have answered on quite a few of your questions.

It's worth noting that we have different perspectives. From the vendor perspective things look very differently that from the perspective of a particular user.

[jamie]

yeah you do answer very quickly and when things align are very helpful and i do appreciate it greatly

and i am sure you can have thought about it your self and yes one customer doesn't make your business though some mechanism to get and process customer feedback would help you and improve my experience.

even if you have decided that its a no, if enough customers ask for it or it might improve enough of their experience perhaps its time to reconsider or at least provide your reasoning so i might better understand you and the product direction

it really is a great product though a few bones to those of us supporting and extending it would go a long long way and will end up with more sales and them maybe you can hire a dedicated support person so you don't have to deal with all the random requests

the first thing i got told about the support was "yuri is a great guy and will help a lot when he wants to though has a very shot form of communication"

do you really want to be still here saying no to customers in another 10 years?

[yuri]

If not having the ability to print exception details to the end user will prevent one from million event when some API key was leaked to the user, I'll say that users inconvenience was worth it.

Developers often say 'no', It's how it is. I usually don't have time, that's why my communication is tend to be brief. The other side may not realize that I'm participating in multiple channels at the same time, in parallel trying to do some other work. The fact that I participate on the forum quite often is not normal.


p.s. As the product is open sourced, you may feel free to patch it. I suspect that printing error details to the end-user is a one-liner change.

[jamie]

is that why? yeah a mode one can turn on and off is the way forward for that

i've also been a developer for decades and i learn that saying maybe or giving a reason is much more powerful and respectful then just a "no"

you are right though that your time could be better used else where and having a main developer giving so much support on a project this old and big is possibly unique though you do seem to be the only support person?

open up to your users more and they will support you more, but close off to them and they will close off to supporting you, for example you don't even let us have our own avatar image

i shall think about patching it though i have my self a lot of other projects to be going at

[yuri]

We have a support team. It does not cover programming.

I'm not sure about forum avatars. It might be something changed after the forum upgrade. The forum has a lot of bugs after the last major upgrade.

[jamie]

ahh your needing a developer support person, don't you have a nephew or sister that is vaguely tech savey that could learn? just make it some one with a lot of empathy

dam upgrade bugs!!! yeah the whole user profile section is mia

[yuri]

An organization would seek for a specific role if there's the need for such. The developer support role is rare, it's expansive. A good engineer would rather be allocated to the development or expensive paid support. A junior engineer would likely provide bad support. Regarding empathy, I suggest not to judge people remotely. It's usually off.

[yuri]

I'm closing the topic. I'd prefer the forum used for helping users.