Error Tracking Software, Raygun, Surveyed 1,400 Developers and Asked...

San Francisco, USA, March 7, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Of the respondents, 93% said they regarded their code quality as good or great.

Raygun CEO, John-Daniel Trask stated that it was a pattern he sees often when talking to developers. “With 70% of software developers using a basic in-house reporting system or not using anything at all to detect errors in their applications, it’s easy to see why many may feel like they’re on top of things.”

Generally speaking only 1% of users will ever take the time to report problems, so your software quality is probably 100x worse than you actually think it is.

John-Daniel Trask, CEO, Raygun

Trask continues to say, “The simple facts are that many developers assume their software is free of issues because their users aren’t reporting them, or their current systems did not have the smarts to discover an underlying issue”.

“Many developers try out a product like Raygun, and discover problems that they didn’t know existed, which have been present for months, even years. Generally speaking only 1% of users will ever take the time to report problems, so your software quality is probably 100x worse than you actually think it is.”

Research has shown that 84% of users will give up if your app crashes more than twice. That’s a figure that should have early stage web or mobile app companies shaking in their boots, and becomes an even bigger problem if you’re not aware of it even happening before it’s released to the public.

Today, more users have encountered problems with apps than those who have not. Compuware, which sells application performance monitoring solutions meant to address such issues, says that 62 percent of users had experienced a crash, freeze or error with an app or several of their apps. Another 47 percent have seen slow launch times. And, 40% said they’ve tried an app that would simply not launch at all.

In 2011, around a quarter of mobile apps were downloaded, used once then abandoned. Today’s users are far more sensitive to applications that don’t perform without issues, given their greater choice.

Trask, who set up the Raygun company with co-founder Jeremy Boyd in late 2012, has seen his fair share of customers that under-estimate the amount if bugs their software contains.

“Almost everyone that signs up for Raygun believes they have far fewer bugs in their software than Raygun identifies. The problem is then finding time to fix all of the issues that have been highlighted, fortunately Raygun can identify the highest priority issues. It can be quite surprising for many developers how many things they didn’t know about, or continue to be notified about when customers are interacting with their software.”

One thing that is clear from the survey is that developer time and fixing errors is expensive. On average, developers spend seven hours per week addressing software bugs and making fixes.

A Cambridge University study published in 2013 estimated the global cost of fixing software bugs stands at £205 billion ($312 billion) annually - and the global technical debt could even rise to as much as £660 billion ($1 trillion) in 2015, according to Gartner Research. It is also estimated that the technical debt per line of code represents an average cost of £2.37 ($3.61).

If your team are spending 15-20% of their time attending to errors, that’s a bunch of time lost when you could be building new features and improvements.

What all this all points to, is that users have a very low tolerance for a broken, buggy piece of software. These days it’s simply not acceptable to wait for users to report issues, as they’re far more likely to stop using it rather than take the time to tell you of problems they’re experiencing.

About Raygun

Raygun has offices in San Francisco and Wellington, New Zealand and has become an industry leader in error tracking and crash reporting tools. A free trial is available.