From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2006-10-12T22:14:44+09:00
Subject: Re: Debugging in the large, modern practice?

On Oct 12, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Andrew Stewart wrote:

> With your specific problem, perhaps you could write a test for the  
> operation you are trying to do.  Start with one that passes.  Now  
> add more tests until one fails -- should be easy as it sounds like  
> you can reliably make the system fail.  Now you can iteratively try  
> to write intermediate tests between the one that passes and the one  
> that fails, until you isolate the problem to a very small change  
> somewhere.

Plus, when you find the one that fails you will no every subsystem  
involved up to there.  You can begin to go write tests for those too  
now, ensuring they function as expected too.  Hopefully you would  
slowly zero in on the problem.

James Edward Gray II