4 ms·
"Heisenbug" as a term has been around for a while. It's one of my favorites, too -- despite referring to possibly my least favorite part of programming. Timing
by thaumaturgy 14y ago
"Heisenbug" as a term has been around for a while. It's one of my favorites, too -- despite referring to possibly my least favorite part of programming.
Timing-related errors make the worst heisenbugs. I had one once where pausing through the code caused the code to work, so I cobbled together a quick debug logging facility for it, and that still caused the code to work just fine. Anything that altered the code by more than a few milliseconds of execution time caused it to work OK.
I stared at it for a while and then rewrote the entire block in disgust.
- freditup 14y agoI hadn't heard it before, but it's a great term! I know one multiplayer Flash service has a problem where their server clocks had drifted apart, and it caused all sorts of crazy issues. Took them a couple of weeks to figure it out and fix the problem. Not quite a Heisenbug maybe, but close. (http://playerio.com/forum/multiplayer/room-disappears-from-list-while-still-active-t33960 http://playerio.com/forum/multiplayer/room-disappears-from-l...) I've had bugs before that have seemed to come and go for absolutely no reason - I think they involved corrupted incremental compilations, but who knows.