2009-02-28

Debugging and Science

I just finished reading Richard Feynman's collection of autobiographical sketches, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" which is a lot of fun. He was a first-class kookball.

At one point Feynman talks about the moment when he figures something out: a new theory or insight or solution that neatly explains some previously mysterious behavior. And I recognized some of the feeling he was talking about, surprisingly enough, from the feeling of recently rooting out the causes of a years-old mandelbug at work.

This got me thinking about debugging, and programming, and complexity, and finally about mysteries...