On Dec 6, 2007, at 7:43 AM, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
* Michael Higgins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-12-05 22:40]:
Isn't that some general principle, you find the error just
after emailing a whole bunch of people?
Another effective [debugging] technique is to explain your
code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain
the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few
sentences, followed by an embarrassed “Never mind. I see
what’s wrong. Sorry to bother you.” This works remarkbly
well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One
university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help
desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain
them to the bear before they could speak to a human
counselor.
—Brian W Kernighan, Rob Pike, “The Practice of Programming”
Reportedly, this noticably reduced the load on the understaffed
centre.
Also be sure and check out "The Contribution of the Cardboard Cutout
Dog to Software Reliability and Maintainability" (http://www.sjbaker.org/humor/cardboard_dog.html
) Which includes a nice table comparing the various attributes
(Attention Span, Distraction, Feedback, Cost) for a variety of
listener types, from engineers to restroom attendants.
--
Jason Kohles, RHCA RHCDS RHCE
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.jasonkohles.com/
"A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire
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