Finding bugs part 1
What is it with open sores projects and usability? I am baffled by all the energy and effort expended by any open sores project with a UI to avoid usability and principles of good design at all costs.
Maybe it’s a subconscious effort to emulate linux. Just as children will adopt the bad habits of their parents, java open source fuckwits will emulate the linux approach to UI; a disgusting soup of every possible ingredient ever conceived by man or nature coupled with a sickening obsession with every ugly default possible.
Today’s vomit lands on a tool that seems to be gaining some popularity; FindBugs.
In addition to the open source curse, FindBugs is unfortunate enough to have been conceived as an academic project. Those facts combined have meant the kiss of death for this poor little app.
Where does one start? Well, lets first create a project. Here’s the first mystery. You have 3 areas, one of which contains ‘archives or directories’, the second of which contains source directories, and the third is for classpath. Now, I’ve only been doing java for about 8 years, so I might not be familiar with all the lingo, but how on earth is a ‘archive or directory’ different from ‘classpath’? Of course, there are no hints or tooltips as to what should go in these areas.
If you haven’t yet deleted this miserable little app and fired off an angry email to its hapless developers by now, you’ll notice the second bit of mindless cruelty they’ve chosen to inflict on the poor sap attempting to use it. While the file chooser allows for multiple files to be selected, the app itself will merrily ignore these and simply pick the last one you chose. I suppose that’s one way to discourage people from having lots of dependencies.
