Also: a behind-the-scenes look into what it's like to be a Startup Evangelist for Microsoft.

Interestingly, this story starts several weeks before 280 North runs into their issue with IE. On January 17th, 2010, reddit user knobler reports a different matter with IE. The next day, the article makes its way over to HN where I make a comment: "Looks like another Microsoft employee on Reddit is looking into this ... but I'll followup on this too. "

A few minutes later, I receive an email from a member of the IE team named Ravi Rao:

"Joel – I noticed on http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059497 that you mentioned you were following up on the issue too.

Please note that the IE team is tracking it already. –thx."

I'm really pleased to learn that the issue is being addressed already and leave it at that.

18 days later, I'm chatting with my neighbor Ross, of 280 North, about an issue he's having with downloading Visual Studio from the BizSpark MSDN page:

ross: i tried to download visual studio from the msdn site

  but the installer appears to be borked

[…]

me: what are you using visual studio for?

  SECRET STUFF?

ross: debugging

  or, attempting to debug

  but it turns out it was not helpful

me: You're working on J# aren't you

ross: god no.

[...]

ross: the problem is that this particular error isn't triggering the debugger

  so, its not helfpul for me

  i have no idea where the problem is or how to find it right now

Later, our conversation shifts, and I realize that the real issue here is that 280 North has spent the previous 3 days trying to track down a bug in IE.

me: So if you've spent 3 hours on this

  you may want to try opening up a case on MSDN

ross: i've spent three days on it

me: then do it

ross: i can't imagine it being useful

  without being able to create a reduction

  and we're talking about, you know, 50,000 lines of code

  but if you still think it will be useful, i will

me: well, I don't know if it'll be useful

  can you recreate the error

ross: just running the code

  reproduces it

  100% of the time

me: Atlas or Cappuccino?

ross: cappuccino

me: so, cappuccino doesn't work on IE you're telling me?

 or just gives crazy errors?

ross: well, this is new code

  we haven't pushed it because of this bug

me: wow, that's not good

Remembering my previous contact with Ravi, I see what I can do to get this issue looked at:

"Ravi,

Is there a person I could reach out to that could help one of our BizSpark startups with a IE issue?

Ross at 280 North has spent 3 days trying to track down the error that you'll see if you load this page in IE:http://cappuccino.org/iebug/index-debug.html

This code works in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and even Opera.

Any ideas on who I can talk to?

Thanks!

--Joel"

Now the fun begins. With a lot of help from Ravi, I start learning how to properly report, and find the people to work on the issue.

After a few days the case gets assigned to an engineer named Veena. A few hours after the case is assigned to her, Veena determines the root cause of the issue:

"The code you are using seems to have recursive functions that are approx 15 times deep. "

The comment from Veena helped them figure out that the core of their problem: "any recursion that happens through the window object is limited to a stack depth of 12":

ross: well, first, we've fixed the bug

  and we did so because of the email that this person sent me

  so, thanks

[…]

  the problem is that IE treats "host" objects differently from all other objects and all other browsers

  and there's a recursion limit on "host" objects, specifically

The next day 280 North posts their initial fix to github.

And that's how I didn't help 280 North track down an issue with IE. Ravi Rao, his team, and Veena in particular did all of the actual work. I just made the connections.

And ultimately, that's a large part of what my job is: Making connections. It's something I did before I worked at Microsoft and it's one of the things that I really enjoy about my job.

If you're a startup and have a question, especially about Microsoft, let me know. I'll try and make some connections. If you've got problems with IE, Ravi is your man [contact].

I haven't used Microsoft software on any of my personal machines for 5 years, and now I work for Microsoft.

I know how frustrated and upset people at startups can be with Microsoft the company or with the software that we make. I've worked for startups and I've been frustrated too. That is why I accepted this job. At Microsoft I'll have the opportunity to do something positive, to fix problems and assuage frustrations.

My title is "Developer Evangelist" but my job is to be something of a diplomat: a two-way channel of information between Microsoft and the startup community in the Silicon Valley.

If you live in the Silicon Valley, I want to hear from you! Especially if you are at a startup. Tell me about your problems, frustrations, and worries. I'm here to help.

Joël Franusic