Click here to Skip to main content
15,867,308 members

Welcome to the Lounge

   

For discussing anything related to a software developer's life but is not for programming questions. Got a programming question?

The Lounge is rated Safe For Work. If you're about to post something inappropriate for a shared office environment, then don't post it. No ads, no abuse, and no programming questions. Trolling, (political, climate, religious or whatever) will result in your account being removed.

 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Richard MacCutchan19-Jan-21 1:13
mveRichard MacCutchan19-Jan-21 1:13 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Nelek19-Jan-21 2:05
protectorNelek19-Jan-21 2:05 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Richard MacCutchan19-Jan-21 2:11
mveRichard MacCutchan19-Jan-21 2:11 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Rusty Bullet19-Jan-21 3:42
Rusty Bullet19-Jan-21 3:42 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Matthew Dennis19-Jan-21 4:50
sysadminMatthew Dennis19-Jan-21 4:50 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
firegryphon19-Jan-21 5:28
firegryphon19-Jan-21 5:28 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Matt Bond19-Jan-21 6:25
Matt Bond19-Jan-21 6:25 
GeneralRe: Thought for the ages Pin
Member 1325675019-Jan-21 10:14
Member 1325675019-Jan-21 10:14 
I've always thought about debugging in terms of tree pruning. Start at the top of the tree and eliminate branches that do not get you to the root of the problem.

In order to do that, you must have a mental picture of what the "tree" looks like. I think that is part of the problem with debugging today, the systems are so complex that no single person can put together that mental picture. Think any big software system, Windows, Linux, AEGIS, Space Station, etc.

Many moons ago on a super minicomputer I had a hardware problem that occurred once every 2-3 weeks, on a system doing millions of instructions per second.

The problem was easily to see (I was working in assembly language); the machine had word & half word instructions. If a half word instruction was followed by a full word instruction the assembler automatically generated a right hand half word NOOP so that the word instruction fell on a word boundary. If everything is working properly, the RH half word NOOP was skipped during instruction executions by the machine.

Except that every 2-3 weeks it didn't skip the RH NOOP (PSW was screwed up and pointed to the NOOP). I had a pretty good mental picture of what was going on, wrote a program to exercise I/O devices based on front panel switches and display each time the RH NOOP was executed in the front panel display (this was back in 1973-1974).

After fiddling to find the right combination of switches that would cause the counter to increment, the tech came in I ran the program & he fixed the issue in less time that it took to show him the problem.

Turned out to be a tap on a delay line that had to be moved to the next tap (5 nsecs).
GeneralThought of the Day PinPopular
OriginalGriff18-Jan-21 5:24
mveOriginalGriff18-Jan-21 5:24 
GeneralRe: Thought of the Day Pin
Daniel Pfeffer18-Jan-21 6:36
professionalDaniel Pfeffer18-Jan-21 6:36 
GeneralRe: Thought of the Day Pin
Matthew Dennis18-Jan-21 7:27
sysadminMatthew Dennis18-Jan-21 7:27 
GeneralRe: Thought of the Day Pin
rnbergren18-Jan-21 9:04
rnbergren18-Jan-21 9:04 
GeneralRe: Thought of the Day Pin
OriginalGriff18-Jan-21 9:22
mveOriginalGriff18-Jan-21 9:22 
GeneralRe: Thought of the Day Pin
W Balboos, GHB18-Jan-21 10:15
W Balboos, GHB18-Jan-21 10:15 
RantYou need to update your password... Pin
Chris Maunder18-Jan-21 4:11
cofounderChris Maunder18-Jan-21 4:11 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
David O'Neil18-Jan-21 4:28
professionalDavid O'Neil18-Jan-21 4:28 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Nelek18-Jan-21 5:07
protectorNelek18-Jan-21 5:07 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Richard MacCutchan18-Jan-21 5:15
mveRichard MacCutchan18-Jan-21 5:15 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Nelek18-Jan-21 7:20
protectorNelek18-Jan-21 7:20 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Richard MacCutchan18-Jan-21 21:30
mveRichard MacCutchan18-Jan-21 21:30 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Nelek18-Jan-21 21:33
protectorNelek18-Jan-21 21:33 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Richard MacCutchan18-Jan-21 22:00
mveRichard MacCutchan18-Jan-21 22:00 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Nelek18-Jan-21 23:36
protectorNelek18-Jan-21 23:36 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Richard MacCutchan19-Jan-21 0:16
mveRichard MacCutchan19-Jan-21 0:16 
GeneralRe: You need to update your password... Pin
Nelek19-Jan-21 1:59
protectorNelek19-Jan-21 1:59 

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.