Sleepy, but Confused Sleepy
This is turning into a week of inexplicably bizarre happenstance.
In software development, it’s frequent that you run into crashing bugs that happen on a “Release” build of the software but not a “Debug” build. This is almost always really annoying. However, it is rather odd to get a crash bug which only manifests on the “Debug” build and not on the “Release” build. Climbing further down the rabbit hole, we can then wrangle a bit of version control regression magic yet still be unable to ascertain when exactly the bug was introduced. Reevaluating the situation, we then make the discovery that the code above the crash point doesn’t work correctly. In fact, it has never worked correctly, however due to voodoo magic bits, the database engine previously didn’t crash but now does. Naturally this means that the previous version of the software actually shipped with this bug, and in fact had a functionality bug assigned to it that somehow got closed out as ‘Known Shippable’. Not that anybody really noticed until now when the voodoo magic bits changed and things started crashing.
The offending routine has been fixed, but since it was never working correctly and it’s actual behavior has never been tested, we shall see if we have fixed two legacy bugs at the expense of introducing a couple dozen new ones. Fortunately, QA is pretty sharp so if it makes obscure things explode, I will soon know to hide under my desk.
At least I was a bit better rested today in order to tackle this head-scratcher. Yesterday I was a bit of a zombie after the bizarreness of Monday night which involved some missing car keys. This would have been a minor irritation had the car in question (not my car), been parked in a spot that was inviting a tow. The situation was rectified by an expensive locksmith visit, but the affair didn’t resolve itself until nearly 2 in the morning.
The bizarre came into play the following day. As could be anticipated, the keys did turn up the next day. The bizarre was in true “Purloined Letter” fashion, three adults managed to somehow miss car keys sitting in plain sight on a kitchen counter at its end where it met up with the kitchen wall. My working theory is a visiting fifteen-month old is secretly one of the Baby Geniuses
and put the keys back on the counter in the wee hours of the morning.
In software development, it’s frequent that you run into crashing bugs that happen on a “Release” build of the software but not a “Debug” build. This is almost always really annoying. However, it is rather odd to get a crash bug which only manifests on the “Debug” build and not on the “Release” build. Climbing further down the rabbit hole, we can then wrangle a bit of version control regression magic yet still be unable to ascertain when exactly the bug was introduced. Reevaluating the situation, we then make the discovery that the code above the crash point doesn’t work correctly. In fact, it has never worked correctly, however due to voodoo magic bits, the database engine previously didn’t crash but now does. Naturally this means that the previous version of the software actually shipped with this bug, and in fact had a functionality bug assigned to it that somehow got closed out as ‘Known Shippable’. Not that anybody really noticed until now when the voodoo magic bits changed and things started crashing.
The offending routine has been fixed, but since it was never working correctly and it’s actual behavior has never been tested, we shall see if we have fixed two legacy bugs at the expense of introducing a couple dozen new ones. Fortunately, QA is pretty sharp so if it makes obscure things explode, I will soon know to hide under my desk.
At least I was a bit better rested today in order to tackle this head-scratcher. Yesterday I was a bit of a zombie after the bizarreness of Monday night which involved some missing car keys. This would have been a minor irritation had the car in question (not my car), been parked in a spot that was inviting a tow. The situation was rectified by an expensive locksmith visit, but the affair didn’t resolve itself until nearly 2 in the morning.
The bizarre came into play the following day. As could be anticipated, the keys did turn up the next day. The bizarre was in true “Purloined Letter” fashion, three adults managed to somehow miss car keys sitting in plain sight on a kitchen counter at its end where it met up with the kitchen wall. My working theory is a visiting fifteen-month old is secretly one of the Baby Geniuses
and put the keys back on the counter in the wee hours of the morning.
Posted by Nathaniel Trost on
Wednesday March 15, 2006 at 3:53pm