The best debugger is a second person reading it aloud

14 comments

• 2026-10-14

  What did you use to measure it?

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• 2026-10-14

  A trace, not a profiler. The profiler said the function was fast, which it was.

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• 2026-10-14

  This matches what the errata says, which almost nobody reads.

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• 2026-10-14

  Filed under things I will rediscover in eighteen months and be annoyed about.

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• 2026-10-14

  The naming point generalises. Half our bugs are a name answering a different question than its value.

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• 2026-10-14

  Is there a version of this that works when the window is not fixed?

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• 2026-10-14

  Yes, but it costs a second index and I would not do it under a million rows.

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• 2026-10-14

  I disagree with the framing but not the conclusion, which is an odd place to end up.

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• 2026-10-14

  Small correction: it is the fifth most recent, not the fifth oldest. Took me a minute.

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• 2026-10-14

  Fixed, thank you. That was a real error and not a typo.

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• 2026-10-14

  This is the one I was looking for last week. Thank you.

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• 2026-10-14

  Worth adding that this only holds if the clock is monotonic. Ours was not, and the failure looked exactly like a slow disk.

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• 2026-10-14

  I have hit this and solved it the other way, and I now think your way is better.

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• 2026-10-14

  Do you have a link for the second claim? I want to read the original.

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