Tag Archives: voodoo debugging

Your Computer is Made Out of Magic!

About ten or more years before I found this nice post and I am so happy that it is still there! http://james.hamsterrepublic.com/technomancy/ I suggest it for reading for anyone with some reserves of geek humour. It also gave me the necessary food to make the initial post of my blog.

When I first read it I got my primary super-powers introducing me to the world of Open Sourcery and Voodoo Debugging. From then I practised a lot of Voodoo Debugging, but to be a honest magician, that didn’t help me to become a better sourcerer.. So I quitted Voodoo and I try to seek the true and pure software magic.

http://james.hamsterrepublic.com/technomancy/

  • Open Sourcery
    Open Sourcery is the new magical approach to software design that is replacing the old machine-minded methods. Basically, it works like this; Someone sets up a CVS repository and a bug tracking system, and a mailing list, and most importantly a website to state the goals and status of the project. Then as many Open Sourcerers as possible start arguing about what the software should actually do (positive energy), and complaining that it isn’t being done fast enough (negative energy). Eventually, the software will write itself, and will continue to evolve itself gradually until it reaches the stage of maturity know to Open Sourcerers as Alpha (which is Latin for “Done”). Occasionally a piece of software will continue to grow beyond the alpha stage until it becomes Beta (which is Latin for “I’m bored, lets do something else”)
  • Voodoo Debugging
    Both hardware support and software testing can benefit from the skill of Voodoo Debugging. It’s very simple. When a problem arises, start changing things randomly. Occasionally re-test the problem, and as soon as it goes away, the last thing you changed becomes the cure. Repeat the last fix on every computer you can find, including and especially ones that never had the problem in the first place. This magic can be aided by chanting such mantras as “I always change this setting in the BIOS and it seems to help”
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