Still no exceptions in 1178

On 18-03-2004 09:29, Lars Ugleberg wrote:

Is 4.0.1 (build 1178) really so good? I could not find a single
reported exception from build 1178.

The error reporting tool is disabled in 1178, so any exceptions IDEA
throws have only appear in the log. I'm pretty sure I missed some
exceptions already (mostly plugin related). Intellij probably have their
reasons for disabling it, but I don't know what they are...

Cheers,
Bas

Aha, thanks for that info! That explains a lot.

How curious of them to disable this. Since first discovering this feature in early EAP builds I have adopted the technique and would never again hand over a Java/Swing with this feature built-in from the very first version.

Best regards,
Lars Ugleberg

On 18-03-2004 13:04, Lars Ugleberg wrote:

Aha, thanks for that info! That explains a lot.

How curious of them to disable this. Since first discovering this
feature in early EAP builds I have adopted the technique and would
never again hand over a Java/Swing with this feature built-in from
the very first version.

Yeah, I also think it's strange. I would think it would give a lot more
valuable info when also used in production instead of just in the EAP.
EAPers, I imagine, could use IDEA in a different way than their regular
customers. Now they never see the exceptions regular users get.

Best regards,
Bas

On 18-03-2004 16:03, Norris Shelton wrote:

It SHOULD be turned off for production releases. EAP users don't mind
exceptions, but others would see that as an indicator of a poor product.

Microsoft disagrees with you:-)
And I would see it as an effort to create the best product possible, but
maybe I'm just not a regular user.

A good compromise is to have a production release 1178 and then put out
an EAP of the same code, but with the exceptions turned on.

But that is an excellent suggestion. Maybe that way we would also get
announcement messages of production builds in the announcements forum;-)

Best regards,
Bas

Norris,

You said:
It SHOULD be turned off for production releases. EAP users don't mind exceptions, but others would see that as an indicator of a poor product.

EAP users DO mind about exceptions. Every reported exception tells of an incidence where an EAP user tried to do something and failed due the faulty code throwing the exception. I do not thank that very many EAP users simply try various functions to help JetBrains find weak spots.

The true strength of the EAP is that real live users try to do their every day work with an early pre-release and therefore are likely to find weak spots that would otherwise endanger the commercial success of the product if still present if the final release.

You are right about customers seeing exceptions as an indicator of a poor product – and they would be absolutely right. The very word implies that it rarely occur and then only when doing something out of the ordinary. That is why some of us politely and respectfully questioned if the initial 4.0 release was really production quality, because if it was not it could weaken the product in the market, when we are all hoping for the opposite.

Please also remember that just because the exception reporting feature has been switched off does not mean that exceptions no longer occur. Switching it off is in my opinion poor usability design since the attempted function still fails, but does so quietly without offering the slightest hint to the user.

And as Bas wisely points out, it is no less important for JetBrains to learn about any remaining bugs in official releases than those exposed to EAP users. On the contrary, switching off the reporting feature just postpones the reports the first EAP release following an official release.

You also said:
A good compromise is to have a production release 1178 and then put out an EAP of the same code, but with the exceptions turned on. That way they will still get feedback about the exceptions, but the "regular" users will not be bothered by the details.

Or they could add a “Don’t show this any more” checkbox to the dialog, leaving it up to the user. This is an option most users will be familiar with from numerous other software products.

Personally, I will be using this trick in all future Java/Swing products for usability reasons and to increase the likelihood that a bug in a shipped product really gets reported. And for those reasons I would also not choose to allow users to turn it off – I would consider that counter-productive for both my customers and myself.

Having said that I will always make my best effort to test my code before releasing it, hopefully eliminating any weaknesses that might throw uncaught exceptions.

Best regards,
Lars Ugleberg

Hello!

It just Log4J configuration set warning level to higher that WARN. Just change your log4j.xml in $IDEA_HOME/bin and you can see exception then occurs.

But why you want this? :)

Thanks!