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chriseckhardt/Clojure Debugging with Scientific Method.md

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Clojure Debugging with Scientific Method.md

Debugging with the Scientific Method by Stuart Halloway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FihU5JxmnBg

  • clear problem statement
  • efficient hypothesis
  • good eperiments
  • useful observations
  • writing it all down

something more descriptive than "it didn't work"

steps you took what you expected what actually happened.

Don't sweat naming

  • divide & conquer
  • decrease & conquer
  • bisection
  • interval halving
  • proportional reduction

We want to take the problem space and reduce it to find the answer.

WRITE IT DOWN Single most important point of his talk.

  • write the problem statment
  • hypotheses
  • what experiment should show
  • why experiment een makes sense
  • observations

Software Specific Advice

Don't use C

The history of debugging is "OMG C has so many pitfalls" Not a level of abstraction you need to be working at.

The Failure is not the Defect

In clojure & Java it's always GC

  • OOM is typically unexpected
  • OOM can happen anywhere
  • OOM can appear as almost any other exception
  • near-OOM dramatically impacts scheduling
  • OOM related problems cascade

Read The Entire Fracking Manual

good docs for debugging are

  • short
  • specifications

Andreas Zeller chapters 5-7 11-14

Why Programs Fail Guide to Systematic Debugging

Write programs that automate the scientific method for debugging.

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