Last week I wrote about ways in which the scientific method is used every day in software development. Fellow reader Pieter-Jan Smets wrote in with an obvious example I had missed:
Hi Jonathan,
I always consider debugging a good “application” of the scientific method. Brian Cantrill said in one of his talks on youtube:
“Debugging is the act of answering questions and then answering them. Not: guessing what the answer is.”
I fully agree with that statement, and it comes down to applying the scientific method. Making a hypothesis about what the cause of the bug/failure/… could be, and then verifying your assumption.
Regards,
PJ
Kudos to Pieter-Jan, and originall Brian Cantrill, for the excellent point!
If you enjoyed this message, subscribe to The Daily Commit to get future messages to your inbox.
Top comments (0)