5 ms·
A Taxonomy of Bugs
- mannykannot 1y agoHere's a step 0 for your debugging strategy: spend a few minutes thinking about what could account for the bug. Prior to its occurrence, you are thinking about what could go wrong, but now you are thinking about what did go wrong, which is a much less open-ended question.
- marginalia_nu 1y agoI've had large success by treating the bug as a binary search problem as soon as I identify an initial state that's correct and a terminal state that's incorrect. It seems like a lot of work, but that's underestimating just how fast binary searches are. Depends of course on the nature of the bug whether it's a good strategy.
- readthenotes1 1y agoI was such a bad developer that I realized I had to automate the re-running of parts of the system to find the bugs. Of course, the code I wrote to exercise the code I wrote had bugs, but usually I wouldn't make offsetting errors. It didn't fix all the problems I made, but it helped. And it helped to have the humility when trying to fix code to realize I wouldn't get it the first time, so should automate replication
- bheadmaster 1y ago> I had to automate the re-running of parts of the system to find the bugs Congratz, you've independently invented integration tests.
- tough 1y agoI don't always test but adding a lil test after finding and fixing a bug so you don't end up there again a second time is a great practice
- bheadmaster 1y agoCongratz, you've invented regression tests.
- quantadev 1y agoCongrats, you've found someone who failed to invoke a buzzword that you know. EDIT: But Acktshally `the code I wrote to exercise the code I wrote` is a description of "Unit Testing", not integration testing.
- bheadmaster 1y agoUnit/integration tests are anything but a buzzword. And my intentions were not to belittle, but to praise. Some actions simply make so much sense to do, that any sensible person (unaware of the concept) will start doing them given enough practice, and in process they "reinvent" a common method.
- keybored 1y ago> And my intentions were not to belittle, but to praise. With the stock eyeroll dismissal phrase.
- quantadev 1y agoAs far as you knew that guy was aware what Unit Testing was since well before you were born. lol. I'm sure he appreciates all your nice compliments.
- bheadmaster 1y agoGood thing he has knights in shining armor like you to defend him from my nasty insults.
- quantadev 1y agoGood thing you can admit what you were doing.
- bheadmaster 1y agoGood thing you can understand sarcasm.
- Animats 1y agoThe Third-Party Bug Is the party responsible for the bug bigger than you? If yes, it's your problem. If no, it's their problem.
- alilleybrinker 1y agoThere's also the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE), a long-running taxonomy of software weaknesses (meaning types of bugs). https://cwe.mitre.org/ https://cwe.mitre.org/
- marginalia_nu 1y agoA subcategory of the design flaw I find quite a lot is the case where the code works exactly as intended, it's just not having the desired effect because of some erroneous premise.
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- djmips 1y agoJohn Carmack uses a debugger