Why do bugs come back?

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
Why is it that a bug can be fixed in one patch, and then a few updates later it "comes back"? If it's fixed it should be fixed, right? I understand why there could always be NEW bugs, but not why old bugs can just reappear at any time. And the devs have to be told about it every time they come back, and sometimes it takes a concerted push from the community to get these bugs fixed a second or third time.

It seems especially weird when it comes to things which appear to be straightforward state toggles:
FA-off not staying.
The fiasco with throttle up/throttle zero at end of hyperspace jump.
Right now Escape Pods have reverted back to being "Illegal Salvage"
The Evacuation Passenger Missions are requiring faction rep again.
Dark Side of planets have started lighting up again.

Why is that?
 

Navynuke99

Navynuke99
I'm guessing you've never worked in coding or programming. Variables strings, linked lists, definitions, etc so funny things that often seem unrelated to other things being changed. Especially once the code is compiled. It's often like this:

http://web.mit.edu/adorai/www/seuss-technical-writing.html

Or this:

PMXHem2_d.jpg
 

Brrokk

Brrokk
Kaocraft said:
Why is it that a bug can be fixed in one patch, and then a few updates later it "comes back"? If it's fixed it should be fixed, right? I understand why there could always be NEW bugs, but not why old bugs can just reappear at any time. And the devs have to be told about it every time they come back, and sometimes it takes a concerted push from the community to get these bugs fixed a second or third time.

It seems especially weird when it comes to things which appear to be straightforward state toggles:
FA-off not staying.
The fiasco with throttle up/throttle zero at end of hyperspace jump.
Right now Escape Pods have reverted back to being "Illegal Salvage"
The Evacuation Passenger Missions are requiring faction rep again.
Dark Side of planets have started lighting up again.

Why is that?
Click to expand...

I fear it's because of poor configuration management. Brilliant programmers all doing their bits, but no-one checking that if one of them modifies something, things done by the others still work.
 

BlackSpaceCowboy

BlackSpaceCowboy
Sometimes it's a code merge issue. Developers sometimes work on two different branches simultaneously. Once a branch is released it has to be merged to the other existing branches. If that's not done, the fix is lost.

It's pretty embarrassing when that happens but it does happen.

The other possibility is the code is very tangled (spaghetti code) such that one fix breaks another fix.
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
Because they do.

Really, that's the long and short of it.

Anyone who has ever done any complex, team-based coding understands. You know you did your part exactly right. The other teams know they did their parts exactly right, mix them together and... bugs happen. Then you fix them and hope they don't respawn. Sometimes they do, and then it's hours, days, weeks or longer trying to figure out what is going wrong and why, and most importantly how to fix it.

Humans are imperfect, and computers are only capable of doing what they're told. Exactingly what they're told, especially when that exactness causes an unforeseen issue.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Kaocraft said:
The fiasco with throttle up/throttle zero at end of hyperspace jump.
Right now Escape Pods have reverted back to being "Illegal Salvage"
The Evacuation Passenger Missions are requiring faction rep again.
Click to expand...
Those I'd chalk up to bigger system changes breaking or reverting workarounds (the throttle change was really well-intentioned and now mostly seems to behave as it's intended to and IMAO correctly, with people having a weird experience when trying to mix analogue throttle and key controls), or, in the case of the missions, someone forgetting to make a change when plastering the template in the mission boards (think of it like every new moon pulling a Mitterand Hollow :p )
Dark Side of planets have started lighting up again.
Click to expand...
They never stopped, there were dark and light places before just as there are dark and light places now; there was no mention of lighting changes, things IME are just differently weird now with the new materials.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
It's often surprising how many *different* ways there are to implement the same bug. So fixing one doesn't stop the exact same symptoms coming back with an entirely different cause six months later.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
More complex code, harded it is to fix so bug doesn't re-appear.

It is worth to remember - actual bug might be different, but result will be same to outside observer.

Projects usually deploy CI and regression tests to wrath off reappearance of defects, but again, more complex project grows, harder and more consuming it is to balance it out.
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
IndigoWyrd said:
Because they do.

Really, that's the long and short of it.

Anyone who has ever done any complex, team-based coding understands. You know you did your part exactly right. The other teams know they did their parts exactly right, mix them together and... bugs happen. Then you fix them and hope they don't respawn. Sometimes they do, and then it's hours, days, weeks or longer trying to figure out what is going wrong and why, and most importantly how to fix it.

Humans are imperfect, and computers are only capable of doing what they're told. Exactingly what they're told, especially when that exactness causes an unforeseen issue.
Click to expand...

Sure all of that is perfectly reasonable but again you'd think that this would mostly produce NEW bugs rather than things like "suddenly escape pods are illegal again."

I guess what I'm trying to get a grasp on is how it's possible for something like "escape pods are illegal" vs "escape pods are not illegal" to be a non-permanent change? Do the devs actually have to maintain constant vigilance over the status of escape pods (and everything else) from now until the day the servers are turned off, because these things can spontaneously change on their own at any time? Will the hitbox on the Chieftain cockpit canopy suddenly become oversized again? Will mining missions spontaneously return to issuing the same material rewards that they're asking you to turn in?

Likewise when they had the fix for Evacuation Passenger missions. It was recognized that these emergency evacuation missions should be available to everyone regardless of your faction standing, so the faction rep requirements were removed. But now they're back. Doesn't a *person* have to deliberately change something in order to make this happen? Does the code erase itself?

I've played plenty of games with bugs that later get patched out, which in turn introduce new bugs, etc. But Elite is the only game I've ever played where old, already fixed bugs *come back*

I should emphasize that this isn't intended to be a criticism of Frontier or a rant post or anything like that. It's more about bewilderment than anything else.
 

GunnerBill

GunnerBill
babelfisch said:
Why do bugs come back? Because they...

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
Click to expand...

I can't believe I could still get Rickrolled in the 21st Century :(
 
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