
A German word for:“It only works when I try to show you how it does not work”? - bcaa7f3a8bbc
https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/54648/what-is-the-german-word-for-it-only-works-when-i-try-to-show-you-how-it-does-n
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ulfw
That translation is wrong. It’s almost the opposite.

Vorführeffekt is when you are trying to show something works (for example to
an audience/in a presentation) and it does NOT work in said presentation.

Remember this oldie but goldie for USB Plug and Play on Windows?
[https://youtu.be/IW7Rqwwth84](https://youtu.be/IW7Rqwwth84)

PS: thanks for all the comments! Didn't realise the double negation would work
too. (Trying to show a bug you found in a meeting/to an audience but then it
turns out it actually behaves unexpectedly as originally intended. No bug.)

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doubletgl
No. Vorführeffekt is used for anything that suddenly behaves differently when
an audience is present. Be that features that suddenly don't work when
observed, or bugs that suddenly don't reproduce anymore, etc.

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JohnStrangeII
That's how I use the word, too. It's a Heisenbug, though only one that
manifests itself when you try to present something.

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lispm
A Heisenbug can be observed in many situations. The Vorführeffekt happens only
in front of an audience.

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beerandt
I think I get what you're trying to say, but by definition an observation
requires an audience, even if it's an audience of 1. Maybe say an increased
audience size?

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justnotworthit
I think a "presenter" is required.

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DeusExMachina
The answer also has a great piece of wisdom in its footnote:

> "That's why we prefer to use power point presentations and (maybe even
> faked) screen shots to present software in early stages of development,
> instead of really running a live installation of the program."

When I was giving speaker training, I was always telling people to avoid live
demos. There are many things that can go wrong and ruin your presentation with
the main culprit being the WiFi connection at the venue (or lack thereof).

Invariably, people would not listen to the recommnedation, to only have their
presentation fail miserably exactly for that reason. Even those with no live
demos where not immune, since they hosted their presentation online.

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southerndrift
Why not both: do the live demo but have some slides prepared just in case.

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l0b0
Almost twice as much work?

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jasoneckert
With camel casting, the German word you are looking for is:
EsFunktioniertNurWennIchDirZeigeWieEsNichtFunktioniert

Without camel casting, the word is: Scheisse

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MichaelMoser123
Scheiße works in every kind of situation. Sort of like блядь in Russian.
(Still amazing that you can have both strings in one message, as well as my
dribble in what goes for English, thanks unicode!) I wonder how other
languages handle this kind of situation (I am vaguely aware of merde)

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Doxin
Dutch has the word "kut" for those sort of situations, it pretty much has the
same role as "fuck" in english. (Though these days "fuck" is a perfectly well
understood word in dutch too)

I'd be highly surprised if there are languages out there without such a
universal word.

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michannne
I like to call it the Admin Effect. It got so bad to the point where anytime I
approached a user to fix an issue, the first thing they said was "It'll
probably just work now that you're here... yep, there it goes, thanks I
guess".

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Doxin
Back when I was doing tech support at a school I'd be getting calls just to
come over so it'd work. Oh well, at least it's an excuse to go for a walk and
have a bit of a chit chat.

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jamil7
I really enjoyed learning the word "verschlimmbesserung" from my colleagues
(the act of by trying to improve something, making it worse). In the context
of programming it works really well.

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Doxin
Surprisingly google translate does a rather nice job on that word, It
translates it to "disimprovement" which seems perfectly cromulent to me.

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etiennemarcel
Also known as "effet Bonaldi" in French:
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jérôme_Bonaldi#L'«_effet_Bonal...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jérôme_Bonaldi#L'«_effet_Bonaldi_»)

~~~
lloeki
Definitely, this blimped into my mind. The Bonaldi effect is more like «
demoing something with great hype, that was working perfectly at rehearsal
time, will ultimately fail with an audience, in proportion with the
hype/reality ratio », but yeah it ended up being generalised enough to be a
superset of Vorführeffekt.

For non French readers, the Bonaldi effect is generally understood as having
catastrophic side effects, causes, or downright coincidences way beyond the
intended demo not working: the climatic example being a demo of a vacuum
cleaner that was met with the studio’s mains breaker triggering and outright
killing the live broadcasting, millions of TV viewers being suddenly met with
static (post mort en showed the vacuum cleaner was not in cause). An analogy
would be demoing some totally harmless piece of code and encounter a kernel
panic or a LAN/WAN takedowns.

In spite of Bonaldi trying increasingly hard for such events not to happen,
they still did, and the audience was increasingly watching the show both for
the often cheesy devices demonstrated, the comedic effect of the hype of such
obvious cheesiness and the unexpected ways things would go sideways.

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jmhakala
I thought the english term "Demo effect" is widely used as well? Is it not?

[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=demo%20effec...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=demo%20effect)

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coldcode
One thing learned growing up in a German household (my parents are from there,
I was born in the US) is that there are special words and phrases and putdowns
in German for almost anything. My grandmother also spoke Yiddish which
confused the hell out of me as I thought some things I heard were German but
weren't. My favorite putdown was always "Brat mir einen Storch und macht die
beine recht knusprig" (spelling might be wrong).

~~~
doliveira
Aren't these German words just compound expressions? It's just that they don't
put hyphens or spaces between words.

~~~
Doxin
While they are in a technical sense, it still _feels_ different to use a
compound word vs a sentence expressing the same idea.

Compare in english: bedtime vs time to go to bed.

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anoncake
Friendly reminder that German compounds aren't that special compared to
English ones. We just don't separate their components with spaces.

~~~
doliveira
Exactly, I never understood the Internet's dumbfounding with German compound
words.

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jaclaz
The whole stuff somehow reminds me of the classic "magic and more magic
switch":

[http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-
story.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html)

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Evgeniuz
In russian this is called "General's effect", where general is an army
general. Basically, something is working as long as a higher rank official is
present and not working otherwise.

~~~
southerndrift
That's the opposite. The soldiers make it work for the general whereas the
German word would be used if it works 'in general' but doesn't when it's
demonstrated to the general during an inspection.

~~~
schoen
So it works in general, but not for generals.

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mamon
Wild guess: someone heard the word "Heisenbug" once and couldn't recall it, so
asked StackExchange for help?

EDIT: it even is mentioned in the comments.

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nosianu
(German here) "Heisenbug" is _not_ the same at all! That's... about _a bug_
(also see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug)
\-- although I dislike being a "definition fanatic", here it's even in the
word itself - "...- _bug_ ")

"Heisenbug" does not have anything to do with the main feature (" _Vorführ_
-Effekt" \-- meaning " _demonstration[ /presentation]_ effect"), that you try
to present it to others. It also occurs when you debug it on your own and even
when you are not looking, unlike the _Vorführeffekt_ which specifically
happens when you _demonstrate something_ (not a bug, but can be a bug -
anything).

If it is something that is supposed to work but it does not when you
demonstrate it, there does _not_ have to be a "bug" somewhere for this effect!
It can just be that the power goes out city-wide. Which does not have to be
due to a bug in that outside system either, you could just have overlooked
scheduled maintenance. Or somebody trips over the power cable. The reason for
the failure can be completely external and outside the thing you are trying to
present.

 _Vorführeffekt_ is much more general. The other comments have quite a few
good examples and explanations.

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jacknews
"Vorführeffekt."

lol

With blurry glasses, i read that as 'f*ck you effect"

In UK, "sod's law" is essentially the same thing, though more general than
just "only works when I demonstrate that it doesn't"

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paulvs
Inverse: "A schrödinbug or schroedinbug . . . is a bug that manifests itself
in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have
worked in the first place."
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug)

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zxcvbn4038
I told my co-workers that Murphy’s law only fails when you try to demonstrate
it - they were all from India and had never heard the term before, thought I
was being serious and dedicated a guy to learning all about it. I like this
word better though, sounds very cool when you say it. I think this is going
replace Murphy.

~~~
anoncake
It doesn't fail: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, including
demonstrating Murphy's law.

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malaya_zemlya
In Russian, the word is визит-эффект
([https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%8...](https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%82-%D1%8D%D1%84%D1%84%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82))

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yogrish
Basically it is like Murphy’s
law.[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law)

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kerng
Bill Gates presents Windows 98 and plugs USB device in -> blue screen!

"Demo effect" is the English version for this.

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pvaldes
English translation: doh!

