You jest but “wait and retry” is such a powerful tool in my DevOps toolbox. First thing I tell junior engineers when they run across anything weird
Code doesn’t work; don’t know why.
Code works; don’t know why.
Cargo Cult Programming is bad.
xkcd 242 obviously
Me playing point and click games
I feel called out. I’m not sure which way I’d go.
Get somebody else to pull it.
For science.
Or the code you are working on is calling a system that is currently unreliable which you cannot be responsible for.
Fuck test automation, it’s a fucking trap get out of it as soon as you can
But sometimes it works, or throws a different error …
And a different error means progress!
A different error each time?
When it does a different crazy thing every time and you have no idea why, it means you’re a genius and have created life.
Computer needs practice to get program right.
The first one is to warm up the engine. Like getting your car ignition to kick over in the winter
The usual for me is that I flip back over to my editor and hit ctrl+save, cause heaven forbid I ever remember to do that before running.
Running the code again is fast and requires no thinking. Finding the problem is slow and requires a lot of thinking.
It’s worth looking under the light-post in case your keys somehow rolled there. Just not for long.
You know, youve gotta give your computer some warmup.
Not sure which is worse. When you know you changed nothing and it inexplicably starts|stops working compared to yesterday
Far worse, and this applies to more than programming. If something is broken, I want it to be consistent. Don’t fix yourself, or sort of work but have a different effect. Break, and give me something to figure out, damn it.
gotta rule out cosimc rays flipping a bit or two
Most applications aren’t written to compile deterministically so there is always a chance.
Compile? Is that true? Pretty sure compilers are generally deterministic in their output.
And run it with the debugger.
This would be more mockable if it didn’t often WORK.
