Byte-Sized Wisdom: Debugging

Mike Wolfe -
"Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer."  -Filipe Fortes

Commentary

So, today I spent several hours chasing down a bug in one of my applications.  As is typical with these sorts of bugs, the fix amounted to making a small change to a single line of code.  

My effective programming rate of "two lines of code per day" during the session A) illustrates the folly of using "lines of code per day" as a measure of programmer productivity and B) had me ready to strangle the moron responsible for the shoddy code in the first place.  

Such was my fury that I felt compelled to identify the guilty party.  I rushed to my Mercurial repository.  I soon discovered the culprit.  I double-checked to make sure I had the right person.  Alas, I had caught myself red-handed.

Sometimes I hate version control.

Etymology

This is one of those quotes whose origins I've never quite been able to pin down.

ChatGPT: Head of Research for NoLongerSet.com

One of the great uses for ChatGPT is as a research assistant for tracking down the origins of esoteric information like programming quotes.  Let's see if we can figure out exactly where this quote comes from.

[MIKE]: Where does this quote come from: "Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer."?

[ChatGPT]: This quote is often attributed to Filipe Fortes, a former software engineer at Microsoft and co-founder of the software development company Artillery. However, it is possible that the quote existed in various forms before he used it.

[MIKE]: When and where did the quote first appear?  How should I attribute it in a blog post?

[ChatGPT]: The exact origin of the quote is unclear, but it is commonly attributed to Filipe Fortes, who used the quote in a blog post on his personal website in 2005. The post was titled "Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer" and it was about the challenges of debugging software.

If you want to attribute the quote to Filipe Fortes in your blog post, you could say something like "As Filipe Fortes, a former software engineer at Microsoft and co-founder of Artillery, once said, 'Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer.'"

[MIKE]: What's the URL of the website?

[ChatGPT]: The URL for Filipe Fortes' blog post containing the quote is not available, as his personal website is no longer online. However, the quote has been widely circulated and can be found in many articles, blog posts, and social media posts on the internet.

[MIKE]: Is it available on the Internet Archive?

[ChatGPT]: I'm sorry, but I don't have the ability to search the Internet Archive for specific web pages. However, you can try to search for Filipe Fortes' website on the Wayback Machine, which is the Internet Archive's web archive. If his website was archived by the Wayback Machine, you may be able to find the blog post containing the quote there. The Wayback Machine's website is https://web.archive.org/.

[MIKE]: Do you know the original URL of his website so that I can search for it on The Wayback Machine?

[ChatGPT]: I'm sorry, but I do not have the information on the original URL of Filipe Fortes' personal website. However, you can try searching for it on the Wayback Machine by using his name or the title of the blog post containing the quote as keywords. That might help you find an archived version of his website.

Wayback Machine

Unfortunately, I could not find the original article anywhere in the Wayback Machine.  If anyone out there has any additional insight into the quote, please drop a comment below.

Acknowledgements
  • Portions of this article's body generated with the help of ChatGPT (obviously)