I think this depends greatly on the product area and ease of updating. Removing problems categorically from designs early has been valuable to me in the past to reduce surface area, avoid impossible refactoring, and eliminate systemic bug classes.
It’s not life or death, but time spent dealing with errors - debugging, the direct effects, understanding full impact - isn’t a resource we can get back.
Thank you for asking this, it helped tease out and crystalize some thoughts I’ve had about the difference in tenor between computer programming and software engineering. I hope these off-the-cuff answers help explain why this doesn’t feel quippy to me; they are specific in scope but those scopes are common.
—
Write clear error messages that provide a way forward. Accept your system will have bugs, and ensure the system state is communicated to the user so they know if their TODO/Test/Reminder/Wish was stored/updated/deleted. Do your utmost to prevent data loss - even when that data hasn’t been formally introduced to your data storage of choice.
Developers should not worry about their sprints being blown because they have to use your APIs. Teams trying to pass off tasks or getting special commendations for dealing with your software should be embarrassing. If developers are wrapping your API in their API, are they doing it because they need the abstraction or because abstracting it once and tracking changes is easier than using it?
Ensure there are logs in place to assist debugging and documentation catered towards end-users, operations, support, and developers. Track relevant metrics to allow for automated fixes and manual intervention so users aren’t the ones having to remind you your software is broken.
Every piece of software has a user - a person, an organization, other code - and software that doesn’t make the user’s life easier increases the chance they’ll stop using it.
(c) could be re-written as “If you’re going to give gifts, make them personally meaningful and not generic.” I think this advice is most relevant when you’re doing personal, one-on-one concierge or consulting. When you have lower contact rates with people, small things such as this reassure that they are not “out of sight, out of mind”. Your mileage may vary based on your role, employer, and field :)
The forum (as well as ‘stage’ and ‘announcement’) feature requires changing to a “community” instance which has some other strings attached. AFAICT long-running servers would never know the new setting is available.
It's not what Facebook does that the others don't, in my opinion, it's that Facebook does not have services for businesses. They have scant little utility to businesses outside of advertising services to temper their outrages with, so they're given even less of a benefit of the doubt than other tech companies.
Apple’s trying to mitigate this by putting themselves to a more internationally focused standard of matches against at least two separate sources of CSA hashes, if my understanding of their announcements/follow-ups is right.
Separately, the US has even greater pressure on Apple in the case they want to unilaterally add database images, considering they have a actual chance and means to jail (and run through the legal ringer) whomever tells them ‘no’. And that’s just the overt pressure available; I think this is a more likely potential for trust violation here, even if both could come to pass.
Some devs do focus on it - this blog post goes into detail about how someone worked through making sure you could walk everywhere in The Witness: https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0005
From a past example at the University of Pittsburgh[1], the result is simply a campus-wide lockdown and increasingly strenuous security requirements for those caught in between the hoaxer and their target.
I think it's a ripe field for experimentation at this point, as it's a very entertaining way to present information. There is/was a series in Australia called Hungry Beast, which produced "Beast File" segments that used kinetic typography in the same manner as this video:
There are more of these segments, but a lot of them have to do with Australian politics / corporations. I've watched them all because I adore the style but it might not be for everyone :)
In addition, there have been several labours of love which really showcase what's possible when you make a full production out of such a work, such as this amazing piece of kinetic typography / video done to Jonathan Coulton's Shop-Vac:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sOfO8Ei1g
Any potential company would have their work cut out for them to allow user-generated content to even get close to the above segments, but as the current crop of tools are general professional-level tools (Adobe After-Affects / Premiere or related) there's definitely a specialized gap here.
I'm curious as to why people should feel 'conned'; certainly there's the iTunes sync issue that was never resolved but that can't really be the entirety of your complaint?
I have a Palm Pre and like it, but I may be missing something as I didn't run out to get one at launch...