portal entry

<p>Unfortunately I have been repeatedly disappointed by Adobe over the years about how slow they are to respond to, or even triage, bug reports. Most recently, over two weeks ago I submitted a report about a critical flaw in ColdFusion Builder’s code formatter. It results in lines of code being altered but remaining syntactically valid. This is so bad that it makes the code formatter fundamentally unsafe to use. Bear in mind that the code formatter is one of the (very few) premium features in the paid version of CFB that are not in the free Express version. Not a peep from Adobe so far on my report. This is not the first time either.</p><p>I should add that I love ColdFusion, I think the language, the server and CFB are all great products, and I have developed many business critical web applications with it. However, the attitude towards and level of support is atrocious in my opinion.</p>

Comment by Legorol San

It's indeed your right to share your opinion and relate your experience. Still, I don't think it's nearly as representative as you assert it to be. But then that's merely my opinion as well. I certainly wouldn't have bothered to write this post and suggest people post issues, if I thought it totally pointless and a waste of time for them to do so.

Comment by Charlie Arehart

Charlie, Don’t be naive.  You absolutely get special treatment. You’re too visible not to. The rest of us have had awful experiences with the bug tracker process as well as the support process in general.  When critical bugs go unanswered for months at a time while Adobe adds new features to <em>point</em> releases, something is horribly wrong.  The concept of semantic versioning is completely lost on the ColdFusion team, and they prioritize new features over critically-ranked bugs. They are clearly responding to someone’s priorities, but without transparency into that process, I have little faith they are actually responding to their customer concerns. They wouldn’t be working on a dying product if they were.    

Comment by roland.collins

<p>Oh for Pete’s sake. As for whether this one bug reported (about the tracker UI) may or may not have gotten “special treatment”, we’ll never know. Maybe it was more because it was publicized here.</p><p>As for the rest, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. But I can’t help offering a retort.</p><p>1. First, why do we need to hear yet another screed against Adobe’s processing of bug reports? Even if you feel that your or some “important” bugs have NOT been addressed, there’s no denying that there have been hundreds of bugs fixed over the past several updates (that’s just a year or two).</p><p>They’re obviously not sitting on their thumbs doing nothing. And I’ve seen for a fact that some of them are directly related to bugs being reported, worked on per the comments, and then closed as fixes that were rolled into the next update.</p><p>So sure, mope about your needs not being met if you want. (I acknowledged that I do myself have several bugs I’ve reported that were never fixed. It is what it is.) Or move on to the greener pastures of other tech if you’re so disappointed with Adobe. (Why do those who think that CF is dying feel the need to repeat their point so often? It would seem it should be self-evident and not in need of such reminding.)</p><p>2. Anyway, I stand behind all I’ve said here in this post, and especially behind the motivation–to help people who want to report issues.</p><p>I wish more people who take the time to scream and holler would put that energy into doing something positive instead. The saying goes: if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.</p><p>I don’t usually take such an aggressive stance in my replies, but if I’m pushed, it’s hard not to push back. (You called me naive, after all.)</p><p>Bottom line: reporting bugs is not a waste of time. They don’t “all go into a vacuum”. Sure, some may have cases of their own that “prove it happens”, but that does not negate all the others that ARE fixed, and might NOT be if someone didn’t bother to raise them.</p><p>3. For those who feel this is an important point to be made, here’s an exercise for you: analyze and tell us how many bugs are reported and fixed, compared to how many are not.</p><p>For bonus points, do it on a rolling basis: what percentage of those filed in 2019 have been fixed? what percentage of those filed in 2018? 2017? It’s possible that more attention is paid to more recently filed issues. Points deducted (for this exercise) for focusing on bugs that are years old (more on that in a moment).</p><p>That sort of factual information might bolster (or disprove) your premise. You could then share that with Adobe. I realize it may not be easy info to gather. I realize we could argue it’s Adobe’s job to do. Again, I’m just offering it as “something to do”, for those to whom this is an annoying situation that “must change”.</p><p>And those with old bugs might consider filing a new one. Again, there may simply be priority given to newly created bugs. It could be human nature. It could be a remnant of how the old bug system was replaced by the newer one. Only time would tell if doing that would be a “waste” of the time spent. And sharing the news of that experience, either way, would again be “something to do”, for those with the motivation.</p><p>But I get it that those who’ve “checked out” on CF or Adobe won’t likely bother. Again, I’m just trying to move the ball down the field, instead of merely booing at the team from the stands.</p>

Comment by Charlie Arehart