Earlier this year, there was a bit of a kerfuffle regarding filing bugs for Apple’s APIs and whether or not us developers should file them. In the past, I never really took the time to file them. I was either too lazy or assumed that the bug was in my code. I’ve always been pretty skeptical of faulting the tools for faults, but I’ve learned that occasionally we are charged with faulty tools and that this is okay. It’s part of development.

At Lonely Planet, we recently came across a particularly nasty bug that we determined to be an issue with iOS APIs. I created a sample project and filed a bug report with Apple. This is only my second filed bug report. Maybe it’s the newness of it all, but I’m not quite as jaded as some of the other developers out there. I hope I never fall victim to that, but I realize it’s all in context of past experiences.

Whenever I take the time to file a report, it makes me feel as though I am doing something good. I would want someone to file a report with me if I were to have a fault in my code. Why shouldn’t I return the favor?