Debugging your system is a process of confirming the many assumptions about it that you believe are true until you find those that are incorrect. How can you transform all of your assumptions into unambiguous, verifiable facts? Creating a fully inclusive, unambiguous specification is challenging because natural language is inherently imprecise, and opportunities abound for ambiguity and reliance on implicit assumptions. Consider the success rate of laws that are clearly understandable and unambiguous for each situation to which you apply them. Engineered systems lack the luxury of a court session to hammer out the details of ambiguities when assumptions in the technical specification are; inaccurate. The system will operate as designed and built, even if that behavior is undesirable.
展开▼
