I do care, very much. I try to read the release notes for every app I update on my phone and on my PC. I don't always have the time or the willpower, but I'll always try to do it.
As an app developer myself, I maintain a very thorough release notes document, including a TLDR section in the beginning with the major features and major bug fixes, and a detailed list below, and an updated, curated list of all known bugs.
I pride myself on doing that, even if nobody ever reads it. It's mostly for my own benefit. If someone comes to me asking "in what version was this bug fixed" I immediately open the release notes in a text editor and find it, without having to sift through our issue tracker and start hunting for keywords and issue status and duplicate bugs.
Me and another guy on my team occasionally dis Google, Facebook and other "tech giants" for their unprofessional release notes. "Bug fixes" indeed. We always wander - those people working on the Google app, on the Facebook app, on Google photos, on Youtube, Google Maps, Google Drive, Gmail - don't they have any professional pride at all?
Yeah I get it, I'm the product and they're just free apps intended to lure us into viewing more ads. But those apps aren't really shitty. They are genuinely useful for me and for a lot of other human beings. But those are human beings who presumably work on them. Software engineers. Do they really take no pride in their job at all? A minimum amount of pride? Writing "we fixed some bugs" in the release notes shows a disrespect not just for your users, but for your own job. For yourself as a professional developer. For your team. For the effort you put into your job, however minimal that effort is.
As an app developer myself, I maintain a very thorough release notes document, including a TLDR section in the beginning with the major features and major bug fixes, and a detailed list below, and an updated, curated list of all known bugs.
I pride myself on doing that, even if nobody ever reads it. It's mostly for my own benefit. If someone comes to me asking "in what version was this bug fixed" I immediately open the release notes in a text editor and find it, without having to sift through our issue tracker and start hunting for keywords and issue status and duplicate bugs.
Me and another guy on my team occasionally dis Google, Facebook and other "tech giants" for their unprofessional release notes. "Bug fixes" indeed. We always wander - those people working on the Google app, on the Facebook app, on Google photos, on Youtube, Google Maps, Google Drive, Gmail - don't they have any professional pride at all?
Yeah I get it, I'm the product and they're just free apps intended to lure us into viewing more ads. But those apps aren't really shitty. They are genuinely useful for me and for a lot of other human beings. But those are human beings who presumably work on them. Software engineers. Do they really take no pride in their job at all? A minimum amount of pride? Writing "we fixed some bugs" in the release notes shows a disrespect not just for your users, but for your own job. For yourself as a professional developer. For your team. For the effort you put into your job, however minimal that effort is.