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Comment by dopamean | Hacker News Reader

> I find it's a good indicator of the maturity of the teams working on them, and how much I'm willing to trust each system.

I hate to nitpick but I'm generally curious. How do you know it's a good indicator? It can definitely be _an_ indicator but how do you know it was good? Did you have a follow up experience that validated what the indicator indicated?

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How a project performs today tells you the zeroth derivative of its location. Looking at the commit log tells you about the first derivative. How people react to Call Me Maybe when its about their product gives you a lot of information about the second derivative.

I'm surprised to find this being a pretty good way to look at it.

How do you know it's a good indicator?

One way is to note whether or not the response to the report dismisses it or hand-waves it away. Another response is to neglect the report for 18 months with no reply.

The tests that aphyr conducts are brutal, which you can see by casual inspection of his Call Me Maybe site or his talks. If the response of a software team tries to divert his attention or your attention from the issue, it does not leave a good impression.

To be fair, he said it was a good indicator of the maturity of the team and how much he was willing to trust the systems. He didn't say it was a good indicator of the reliability of those systems.

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