Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

The Scientific Method of Troubleshooting

Avatar for Blithe Rocher Blithe Rocher
August 02, 2014
Programming
0
140

The Scientific Method of Troubleshooting

This version of the talk was presented at eurucamp 2014.

Avatar for Blithe Rocher

Blithe Rocher

August 02, 2014
Tweet

More Decks by Blithe Rocher

See All by Blithe Rocher
Microservices War Stories
Avatar for Blithe Rocher blithe
1
190
The Scientific Method of Troubleshooting
Avatar for Blithe Rocher blithe
1
220
The Scientific Method of Troubleshooting
Avatar for Blithe Rocher blithe
2
690

Other Decks in Programming

See All in Programming
Rancher と Terraform
Avatar for Ryoma Fujiwara fufuhu
2
170
オープンセミナー2025 @広島 LT 技術ブログを続けるには
Avatar for Satoshi Kaneyasu satoshi256kbyte
0
150
詳解！defer panic recover のしくみ / Understanding defer, panic, and recover
Avatar for convto convto
0
210
Nuances on Kubernetes - RubyConf Taiwan 2025
Avatar for Andrey Novikov envek
0
220
速いWebフレームワークを作る
Avatar for Yusuke Wada yusukebe
3
700
Introducing ReActionView: A new ActionView-compatible ERB Engine @ Rails World 2025, Amsterdam
Avatar for Marco Roth marcoroth
0
100
パスタの技術
Avatar for Yusuke Wada yusukebe
1
550
AI時代のドメイン駆動設計-DDD実践におけるAI活用のあり方 / ddd-in-ai-era
Avatar for MinoDriven minodriven
25
9.5k
兎に角、コードレビュー
Avatar for mitohato14 mitohato14
0
160
FindyにおけるTakumi活用と脆弱性管理のこれから
Avatar for adachi.ryo rvirus0817
0
270
CSC305 Summer Lecture 12
Avatar for Javier Gonzalez-Sanchez javiergs
PRO
0
130
AIでLINEスタンプを作ってみた
Avatar for kmuto eycjur
1
220

Featured

See All Featured
The Pragmatic Product Professional
Avatar for Laura Van Doore lauravandoore
36
6.8k
Into the Great Unknown - MozCon
Avatar for Noah Learner thekraken
40
2k
Balancing Empowerment & Direction
Avatar for Lara Hogan lara
3
600
The Power of CSS Pseudo Elements
Avatar for Geoffrey Crofte geoffreycrofte
77
5.9k
Designing for humans not robots
Avatar for Tammie Lister tammielis
253
25k
The Invisible Side of Design
Avatar for Vitaly Friedman smashingmag
301
51k
Fight the Zombie Pattern Library - RWD Summit 2016
Avatar for Marcelo Somers marcelosomers
234
17k
CSS Pre-Processors: Stylus, Less & Sass
Avatar for Bermon Painter bermonpainter
358
30k
Mobile First: as difficult as doing things right
Avatar for Swwweet swwweet
224
9.9k
Bash Introduction
Avatar for André Augusto Costa Santos 62gerente
614
210k
RailsConf & Balkan Ruby 2019: The Past, Present, and Future of Rails at GitHub
Avatar for Eileen M. Uchitelle eileencodes
139
34k
YesSQL, Process and Tooling at Scale
Avatar for Rocio Delgado rocio
173
14k

Transcript

  1. The Scientific Method of Troubleshooting

  2. @blithe

  3. Big Nerd Ranch Atlanta, Georgia

  4. Scientist

  5. PhD in Physical Chemistry

  6. Physics

  7. Chemistry

  8. 6 Years!

  9. Experiments

  10. Scientific Method

  11. Developer < >

  12. StackOverflow

  13. Problem solved?

  14. Learn anything?

  15. Most Important Part

  16. Scientific Method

  17. Set of Techniques For Acquiring Knowledge

  18. Methodical

  19. Systematic

  20. “Has anyone seen string interpolation fail?”

  21. Define the Problem

  22. Expected behavior? ! ! !

  23. Expected behavior? ! Actual behavior? !

  24. Expected behavior? ! Actual behavior? ! Criteria for success?

  25. Do Your Research

  26. Know your environment

  27. Read the literature

  28. Discussions

  29. Make it fail!

  30. Establish a Hypothesis

  31. Design the Experiment

  32. Divide and conquer!

  33. Limit the variables

  34. Try something weird

  35. None

  36. Hierarchy of Blame

  37. Gather Data

  38. Current status?

  39. Read the error message!

  40. Analyze Your Results

  41. Problem solved? ! Learn anything?

  42. Understand the Why

  43. Future Experiments

  44. Embrace the Success

  45. Keep a Good Lab Notebook

  46. None

  47. You won’t remember

  48. Logs aren’t enough

  49. Commit Messages

  50. Update the Docs

  51. Contribute

  52. None

  53. Share the Knowledge

  54. Thanks! @blithe