18 Apr 2014
Talking about Debugging with the Ruby Rogues
I got to hang out and chat about debugging with the Ruby Rogues! I was totally flattered to be invited to be their guest for Ruby Rogues episode 150: The Debugging Mindset with Danielle Sucher, and had lots of fun recording the show.
It was so fantastic to just get to chat about science and problem-solving and trying to get better about putting our egos aside and really evaluating the evidence before us with such a great group of people.
It started like this…
DAVID: I bought a microscope yesterday. And there was a splotch on it and I couldn’t figure out what it is and I did the scientific method trying to figure out where in the microscope the splotch was coming from. Turns out, I was seeing a reflection of my optic nerve.
JAMES: Nice.
[Chuckles]
JOSH: Yeah, you can look in the microscope a really long time and you won’t find that.
DAVID: Yeah.
DANIELLE: So, when you gaze into the microscope, the microscope gazes back into you.
[Laughter]
DAVID: Also gazes back to me, yeah.
JOSH: [inaudible] Are you saying that what you see inside Dave’s eyes is the abyss?
DAVID: Yes.
DANIELLE: Yeah, yeah.
JAMES: I just want to know how he proved that hypothesis false. Did he gouge one of his eyes out?
[Laughter]
DAVID: Actually, and this is the part that I was very, very proud of, I finally switched eyes. And the splotch moved and changed shape.
So brilliant!
And this was my favorite quote of mine from the episode:
"Look, the goal is to prove that I’m wrong. That means I win. I’ve proved that I was stupid about something so I can move on to being stupid about something more interesting."
Really, you can just check out the whole episode here. Have fun!