Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

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Tue, 04 Feb 2003

Learning from Mistakes

Pragmatic Dave Thomas has a nice little bit on how pilots learn from mistakes. They read accident reports. In our field, we should build on the bug report.

I once worked with someone who took great glee in dissecting bugs in his code. Not only would he buy lunch for anyone who found a bug, he'd write long, loving notes analyzing the bug, why he made it, etc. We need more people like him.

I note in passing that I edit the "Bug Report" column for STQE Magazine. I'm always looking for authors.

Here's an example of a kind of bug I learned about. I call it the "just what I needed (almost)" bug (PDF).

## Posted at 09:31 in category /bugs [permalink] [top]