sympy: what's wrong with this picture?

[Mensanator]

On Mar 3, 6:21 pm, Robert Kern <robert.k... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mensanator wrote:
> > On Mar 3, 4:08 pm, Robert Kern <robert.k... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Mensanator wrote:
> >>> On Mar 3, 2:49 pm, Carl Banks <pavlovevide... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> It's just a bug--probably sympy is messing with the internals of the
> >>>> random number generator.  It would be a simple fix.  Instead of
> >>>> b****ing about it, file a bug report.  
> >>> I did.
> >>>> Or better yet, submit a patch.
> >>> I would if I knew what the problem was.
> >> Did you even try to figure it out? It took me all of 5 minutes to find the mistake.
>
> > Could I trouble you to share? Then I could continue my testing.
>
> I posted the patch on the bug tracker:
>
>    http://code.google.com/p/sympy/issues/detail?id=729

Thanks, I think I actually figured out how to use it.

>
> >>> I posted it here because someone recommended it.
> >>> I'm simply un-recommending it.
> >> It was a mistake, an easily remedied mistake,
>
> > But I didn't know that (and still don't).
>
> >> not a big unchangeable design decision.
>
> > I didn't know that either. For all I know, I might have to
> > wait for the next version, and who knows when that will be?
>
> The point is that you didn't try to figure it out.

Give me a break, I'm not a developer, just an end user.

> And you assumed the worst

Wasn't my assumption correct? That it really was messing
outside it's domain?

> rather than giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.

As in "maybe it only fails for me"? Was I crying that the
sky was falling?

> You didn't even wait to get a response from the package
> maintainer

I have no experience with those web sites. I think this is
the first time I was able to successfully report a bug and
have no clue what the turnaround time is.

> about how serious the issue was

The symptom was serious although the fix was simple.

> before you came here to un-recommend it.

As an end user, I get most of my information here.
Since I saw the link to sympy here on this newsgroup,
I thought it would be irresponsible to file a bug report
without simultaneously mentioning it here.

>
> All software has bugs.
>
> Good software has bugs.

Are bugs off-topic here?

>
> Finding a single bug in a package is not sufficient cause to warn people away as
> if it had the plague.

It DID have the plague. It affected anything else that tried
to use random numbers.

>
> >> If you want to recommend against sympy as a package, there is a larger
> >> burden of proof that you have yet to meet.
>
> > What kind of burden of proof must one have to recommend it in the
> > first place?
>
> Significantly less. "It was useful to me," is sufficient.

Really? That's sufficient? Ok, but how is my pointing out a verifyable
problem that affects the entire system not a sufficient burden of
proof against recommending the package? Or should I just have worded
it differently?

Aren't I at least going to get credit for having found it?

>
> --
> Robert Kern
>
> "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
>   that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
>   an underlying truth."
>    -- Umberto Eco