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More on XY (Score:1)
There was a good riff on the XY problem on Perlmonks: XY Problem [perlmonks.org].
Also, for those inclined to tell you what the problem is, perhaps you should encourage them to write it as a test file [perlmonks.org]. At least that way you get something useful to work with.
Re:More on XY (Score:2)
I didn't even realize "the XY problem" had become a standard term for it. (Or that there was a better source about it to point to, within the Perl community rather than without. But knowing how things are, I should not be surprised. :) )
I'd love to see test-driven bug reporting. Unfortunately that doesn't work in this case for a number of reasons. The primary reason in this case is that the problem is not with my code, but with theirs. :) Other problems are that this is SQL, and that the users are effectively non-technical. For me, the bug report formula I linked to earlier is enough for me to get a test, or to discern when the issue is user error. As long as I can coerce people into actually providing all three pieces of information.
In this case, what I got was the answer to #1: "What did you do?" I'm going to have to work out the answers on my own to #2: "What results did you get?" and #3: "What results were you supposed to get?"
J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
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