Last week I was scrolling through Hacker News (HN) when an unusual post on the front page caught my eye. The title read “Math.Round opens the print dialog (github.com).” I clicked the post and it opened up to an issue report on GitHub. The bug was a hilarious one: when you run code with a math round function on https://try.dot.net, the website opens a printer dialog! The post quickly got popular on HN because of the highly unexpected result.
To reproduce the bug I copied sample code from the GitHub issue and ran it on try.dot.net. Indeed, the bug was real! I went back to the GitHub issues page and scrolled through the comments. Most comments were about bug reproductions on different machine configurations. I thought it would be cool if I could comment with video capture of the bug as it happens, so readers could quickly understand the bug.
I made a 10 second screen recording with Outklip to capture a reproduction of the bug. After recording, I used the Outklip create GIF feature to trim the video and create a 5 second GIF that showed the bug. I downloaded the GIF and uploaded it to a new GitHub comment.
Within seconds I started getting emoji reactions from readers. The comment so far has racked up 101 total reactions, the most common reaction being ❤️. People received the screen video capture extremely well received for good reason — everybody appreciates being able to see a bug without spending much time trying to reproduce it themselves.
The next time you comment on a bug report, post a gif of the bug reproduction. People that see your gif will love you for it!
