7:26 PM
"Using ArcGIS shouldn't require a degree in software testing." - mindless.panda, gis.stackexchange.com/q/10772/108
A few years ago I was invited to join the Esri beta test for 9.2. I declined because "I already log an issue for every x hours using ArcGIS why would I want to do even more? I need to do my real job too.". I reconsidered for 9.4 (renamed 10 for release) and joined the beta. It was interesting and cool to see the new features, but in the end I didn't participate much for exactly the same reason I declined earlier, it got too much in the way of doing my work.
On average I log one case with tech support for about every 8 hours of arcgis work (I don't use it full time), and for every case I document and log there are two I don't bother with (too hard to explain, too hard to reproduce).
To be fair, probably a third of the cases I log can be attributed to user error (I did something wrong), something specific to our environment (they can't reproduce), or it wasn't arcgis at all (it's an addon/windows/msoffice/foobar bug, we can't help it).
Lest this be perceved as a wholly "arcgis sux" rant, I encounter and log issues with most of the other software I use also (excepting Microsoft products, as far as I know there is no public channel for that). The incidence of Arcgis cases is so high because, a) I do use it a lot, b) we pay mucho denari for tech support so I'm darn well going to use it, c) Arcgis is big and complicated, so there are many many opportunities for bugs to live.
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