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Also, I observed that as you get more and more experienced, intuition ("hunch") works surprisingly well. It's not always reliable and sometimes it's just plain

Also, I observed that as you get more and more experienced, intuition ("hunch") works surprisingly well. It's not always reliable and sometimes it's just plain wrong though.

brlewis 10y ago
From the article: "Intuition can be an effective strategy for debugging but requires extensive experience and, when used as the only strategy, leaves the programmer unprepared to handle new, unfamiliar bugs." On the other hand, I don't see how you can keep experience and intuition from being a factor in any instance of the scientific method.
- philipov 10y ago
  It sounds like a moot point. It's not possible to acquire the extensive experience necessary to have intuition without having another strategy in the first place. Intuition is the long-term consequence of employing a strategy: no longer having to step through the same sequence every time.
  - dhodell 10y ago
    Exactly this.
- jdefr89 10y ago
  Indeed intuition is needed. When John Nash, a Mathematician with schizophrenia, was asked why he believed such irrational things when he such a brilliant man, he responded along the lines of "Those irrational ideas came to me the same exact way my rational, ground breaking ideas came to me." So intuition will always be needed, we just need to remember to check it.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>> It's not always reliable and sometimes it's just plain wrong though. Yep, and in my experience this can result in wasting huge amounts of time. I've lost count of the number of times I've followed my intuition down some rabbit hole, and several hours later found that the issue was something totally unrelated. This usually happens when I've been coding for a while and am tired. :)
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Well, (well developed) intuition is on average a net win. For any given problem, it can let you down badly. I try to do something like "follow intuition, but with a timer started". If following the intuition fails to bear fruit by the time it "should", I start to question if I'm on the right track.

Also, I observed that as you get more and more experienced, intuition ("hunch") works surprisingly well. It's not always reliable and sometimes it's just plain wrong though.

brlewis 10y ago

From the article: "Intuition can be an effective strategy for debugging but requires extensive experience and, when used as the only strategy, leaves the programmer unprepared to handle new, unfamiliar bugs." On the other hand, I don't see how you can keep experience and intuition from being a factor in any instance of the scientific method.

philipov 10y ago
It sounds like a moot point. It's not possible to acquire the extensive experience necessary to have intuition without having another strategy in the first place. Intuition is the long-term consequence of employing a strategy: no longer having to step through the same sequence every time.
- dhodell 10y ago
  Exactly this.
jdefr89 10y ago
Indeed intuition is needed. When John Nash, a Mathematician with schizophrenia, was asked why he believed such irrational things when he such a brilliant man, he responded along the lines of "Those irrational ideas came to me the same exact way my rational, ground breaking ideas came to me." So intuition will always be needed, we just need to remember to check it.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>> It's not always reliable and sometimes it's just plain wrong though. Yep, and in my experience this can result in wasting huge amounts of time. I've lost count of the number of times I've followed my intuition down some rabbit hole, and several hours later found that the issue was something totally unrelated. This usually happens when I've been coding for a while and am tired. :)

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Well, (well developed) intuition is on average a net win. For any given problem, it can let you down badly. I try to do something like "follow intuition, but with a timer started". If following the intuition fails to bear fruit by the time it "should", I start to question if I'm on the right track.