soc-pe-bot
commented
4 months ago Team's Response
Issue is recognised. However, we have already warned that editing the file may lead to errors. As such, if a user were to edit this file incorrectly, they would knowingly expect an error already. Normal users would not go through this process, hence this error will not be shown in normal operations. As a result, I believe that this severity should be classified as Medium.
Items for the Tester to Verify
:question: Issue severity
Team chose [severity.Medium]
Originally [severity.High]
- [x] I disagree
Reason for disagreement: The points raised in defence for the severity are that:
1) The user has been warned sufficiently of unexpected behaviour from manual editing 2) Normal users do not encounter this bug in normal operation
The following is why I disagree with these points:
1) While the UG may have warned the user, the problem at hand is not the user expecting unexpected behaviour, but that the programme does not handle unexpected behaviour gracefully. The programme crashes without rectifying the issue or warning the user of the exception thrown, and will keep crashing until the user manually debugs the issue. I argue that in instances where this bug is encountered and present, the programme is completely unusable. This is pretty major.
2) From the screenshot, BudgetBuddy expects advanced users as part of their target user profile and accommodates this part of their user base through implementing the manual file editing feature. 
I feel that "normal users" are expected to start manually editing the data files after they gain experience and comfort with using the app. This is due to the UG "welcoming" such users to manually edit the files, including DefaultCurrency.txt, and encouraging this to be adopted as normal practice in operating the app. This feature seems to be intended for use in "normal operations" by the normal user base when they feel they know how to use the app.
Furthermore, the bug is easily recreated by minor non-intentional typos from normal usage. With enough use of the feature, the bug can easily triggered on different occasions repeatedly from small user error.
3) On the topic of warning, the app crashes even when input may not be considered a typo. For example from the screenshots, typing "usd" instead of "USD" causes an error, even if "usd" is not technically wrong. The bug is easily recreated not only from typos, but also from seemingly correct inputs. There is no warning in the UG to let the user know this either.
Hence to sum up:
1) all users are likely to use the buggy feature when they are comfortable with the app. This behaviour is encouraged by the UG 2) The bug is recreated easily from minor accidental typos in normal usage of the manual edit feature. 3) The app is completely unusable when the bug is encountered. It will just keep crashing til fixed by the user (the app does not fix/detect corruption automatically)
For a major bug that renders the app unusable, can repeatedly happen from small typos in normal usage and can happen to all users, I feel that this bug deserves a high severity.
The programme seems to crash when default currency file is corrupted, problem seems to be lacking exception handling.
Can be recreated by editing the currency file and changing currency string to another other string. When I tried "usd" instead of the expected "USD", programme still crashes.
Might be pretty severe especially since programme advocates for editing of data files directly, increasing risk of currency file being edited and resulting in crash.