4 ms·

At one point, I encountered a low level bug that would only manifest if the computer was physically located in a particular room. It ended up being an undocumen

At one point, I encountered a low level bug that would only manifest if the computer was physically located in a particular room. It ended up being an undocumented cabling revision, but I revisited a lot of assumptions about the nature of software and reality before getting to that point.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"but I revisited a lot of assumptions about the nature of software and reality before getting to that point." I encountered some bugs that felt like this (software only though), where I did not found the all explaining logical solution and ended up rewriting that part. But I saved the whole state of the project and data in a zipped file and keep them locked away - so one day, when I feel like madness (and maybe have better tools avaiable) I will jump into it, either to proof my own stupidity - or the existence of dark magic, poltergeister and demons.
yummypaint 5y ago
I have come to love the feeling that the universe is broken when bug hunting. It means the solution is close at hand. If there are still lots of plausible explanations left then it means there is lots of work left to do. Things always seem most insane just before figuring it out.
- laurent92 5y ago
  And then you find it and you remember the sentence: “Everything that can fail, will fail”.
- pineconewarrior 5y ago
  Thank you for this positivity! I'll try to remember this next time I am frustrated.
cortesoft 5y ago
Sounds like the 500 mile email bug https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  The thing I like about this story is that all the facts fit. The user may be explaining something that is crazy to you initially, but the first step is to gather the facts, THEN try to figure it out. So often, the part of troubleshooting is "How can I get more information about X?" In this case, the seemingly unrelated step of telnet into SMTP gathered a few facts together which helped to explain it all.
- azinman2 5y ago
  I’d love to see a gallery of these kinds of bugs and the actual solutions. This was an awesome story— thanks for linking to it. Also I didn’t know about the units cli program!
  - AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Units is a wonder. I use it pretty much daily. It's a shame units_cur is so fragile though.
  - jraph 5y ago
    http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html

hutzlibu 5y ago

"but I revisited a lot of assumptions about the nature of software and reality before getting to that point." I encountered some bugs that felt like this (software only though), where I did not found the all explaining logical solution and ended up rewriting that part. But I saved the whole state of the project and data in a zipped file and keep them locked away - so one day, when I feel like madness (and maybe have better tools avaiable) I will jump into it, either to proof my own stupidity - or the existence of dark magic, poltergeister and demons.

yummypaint 5y ago

I have come to love the feeling that the universe is broken when bug hunting. It means the solution is close at hand. If there are still lots of plausible explanations left then it means there is lots of work left to do. Things always seem most insane just before figuring it out.

laurent92 5y ago
And then you find it and you remember the sentence: “Everything that can fail, will fail”.
pineconewarrior 5y ago
Thank you for this positivity! I'll try to remember this next time I am frustrated.

cortesoft 5y ago

Sounds like the 500 mile email bug https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

_carbyau_ 5y ago
The thing I like about this story is that all the facts fit. The user may be explaining something that is crazy to you initially, but the first step is to gather the facts, THEN try to figure it out. So often, the part of troubleshooting is "How can I get more information about X?" In this case, the seemingly unrelated step of telnet into SMTP gathered a few facts together which helped to explain it all.
azinman2 5y ago
I’d love to see a gallery of these kinds of bugs and the actual solutions. This was an awesome story— thanks for linking to it. Also I didn’t know about the units cli program!
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  Units is a wonder. I use it pretty much daily. It's a shame units_cur is so fragile though.
- jraph 5y ago
  http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html