Picture this: you’re a mechanic. A customer strolls in, tosses you their car keys, and grumbles, “It’s not working.” No elaboration, no context, just a pair of expectant eyes staring you down, daring you to deduce whether their car has spontaneously combusted or they’ve forgotten where the clutch is. Welcome to my life as a programmer handling bug reports from the public. Every so often—no, scratch that—every single day, I receive a bug report that is the equivalent of someone yelling into the void, “The thing is broken!” Which thing? Broken how? Did it explode, or did you just forget your password for the fourth time this week? No one knows. Least of all me. The Fine Art of Vagueness Some of my favourites include: These reports are the black holes of the debugging universe. They provide no light, no direction, and they actively devour any hope of efficient problem-solving. User Error: The Silent Culprit More often than not, these “bugs” are less about something being genuinely wrong with the code and more about user error. Don’t get me wrong—people make mistakes. It’s fine! Technology can be confusing. But please—own it. If you’ve tried to reset your password with a username that doesn’t exist, don’t tell me the system’s broken. That’s like trying to open your neighbour’s car with your house key and blaming the manufacturer. Then there’s the classic case of “blaming the website for your dodgy internet connection.” Pro tip: if Netflix is buffering and Spotify won’t load either, it’s not me—it’s you. Debugging: A Real-Life Whodunnit When I get a bug report, I transform into Sherlock Holmes. First, I put on my metaphorical deerstalker hat (which, let’s be honest, is just my hoodie pulled up in despair). Then, the questioning begins: Half the time, I feel like I’m interrogating a witness to a crime they didn’t even realise they committed. I’m met with responses like, “I don’t know, I just clicked something,” or the all-time classic, “It worked yesterday.” Brilliant. I’ll travel back in time to troubleshoot for you. How to Be a Bug Reporter MVP If you ever find yourself needing to report a bug, do me—and every other programmer—a favour: The (Occasional) Joy of the Job Despite the daily barrage of frustrating reports, every so often, I get a truly satisfying case. Like the time someone emailed, “Your site is hacked,” and I discovered they’d been redirected by malware on their own computer. Or when a user wrote, “I can’t log in,” and we realised they’d misspelt their own email address three years ago. Moments like these remind me that while programming is often a battle against ambiguity, it’s also a chance to play detective, solve puzzles, and maybe—just maybe—help someone navigate the terrifying wilderness of the internet. In Conclusion: Help Me Help You So, next time you encounter an issue online, remember: your programmer is not a psychic. We don’t have a crystal ball, a magic wand, or a sixth sense for your browser’s tantrums. All we ask is that you throw us a bone. A scrap of information. A crumb of context. Until then, I’ll be here, deerstalker hat on, muttering, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” while attempting to deduce whether “the website isn’t working” means my server’s on fire or you’ve forgotten to turn off Caps Lock.