That's step zero: rule out black magic
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Those damn cosmic rays flipping my bits
Please tell me you look skyward, shake your fist and yell damn you!!!!
I wonder if there's an available OS that parity checks every operation, analogous to what's planned for Quantum computers.
Unrelated, but the other day I read that the main computer for core calculation in Fukushima's nuclear plant used to run a very old CPU with 4 cores. All calculations are done in each core, and the result must be exactly the same. If one of them was different, they knew there was a bit flip, and can discard that one calculation for that one core.
Interesting. I wonder why they didn't just move it to somewhere with less radiation? And clearly, they have another more trustworthy machine doing the checking somehow. A self-correcting OS would have to parity check it's parity checks somehow, which I'm sure is possible, but would be kind of novel.
In a really ugly environment, you might have to abandon semiconductors entirely, and go back to vacuum as the magical medium, since it's radiation proof (false vacuum apocalypse aside). You could make a nuvistor integrated "chip" which could do the same stuff; the biggest challenge would be maintaining enough emissions from the tiny and quickly-cooling cathodes.
That feeling when it is, in fact, computer ghosts.
Me: "Hmm... No... No the code is good, it's the compiler that's wrong."
runs again
The first is a surprise; the second is testing.
could be a race condition
Hmm..you may be right. I'll get my Hispanic friend to run it and see if he gets the same result.
It works on my machine
ok, then we ship your machine.
i sometimes do that so i can inspect the error messages on a cleared terminal
Sometimes I forget what I was looking for and have to restart the mental loop when doing this.
One of my old programs produces a broken build unless you then compile it again.
Some code has bugs.
Some code has ghosts.
======== 37/37 tests passing ========That's when the real debug session begins
Great time to find out your tests are useless!
They’re not completely useless. They’re conditionally useless, and we don’t know the condition yet.
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Just had that happen to me today. Setup logging statements and reran the job, and it ran successfully.
I've had that happen, the logging statements stopped a race condition. After I removed them it came back...
Thank you for playing Wing Commander!
If that doesn't work, sometimes your computer just needs a rest. Take the rest of the day off and try it again tomorrow.
The crazy thing is that sometimes this just works...
I often do this, but I always hit Ctrl-S before running it again. Shamefully, this probably works about 10% of the time. Does that technically count as changing nothing?
That and a make clean can work wonders.
Autosave on focus loss dude.
Well, duh! You need to use the right incantations!
Somehow higher than 0% success rate.
it's only dumb til it works
Sponsored by QA gang. Gotta make sure it's a 5/5 issue and not just a frequent issue
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Got to make sure it's not one of those phantom failures.
My way: wrap it in a shell script and put a condition if exit status is not 0 then say "try clear the cache and run it again"
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Einstein did say...
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