I did a quick search around the interweb. There is no precedence, so i would like to officially coin the pharse House MD debugging.
Official definition: a way to discover the source of the bug by eliminting the impossible and whatever remains, although unlikely, must be the cause. It is also known as the Sherlock Holmes deduction method.
Most of the bugs I have encounted are obvious, with nice stacktrace to help track it down to the line number. Some bugs however, through complexity of configuration or external library obsfucation, hides the source of the bug in a maze of incoherent logics. That’s the perfect time to use HMD!
Just like how House determine the real disease on the show, we can get to root of the cause of the bug by testing all sub component that could possibly cause the problem. Once we discover the offending component, sub divide the areas to test for once more and continue until the bug is found.
So give it a try next time you find a mystey bug, and watch House MD, it’s a great show.
