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when does debugability break down?

Whenever I read about some programming language based on biology*, I get the heebie-jeebies: I've had to maintain and debug systems I did not write (heck, even the ones I did write...) that were pretty statically studyable and yet still often obtuse. How much more difficult to debug will future systems be?! How do you see such things? What concrete examples / experiences / studies might you have?

* PDF: Organic Programming Language GAEA for Multi-Agents.

By raould at 2010-11-04 20:08 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 5368 reads

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Bio debugging

I think you would be less a programmer and more like a medical doctor ;-)

By shaurz at Tue, 2010-11-09 01:44 | login or register to post comments

We pretty much are already

We pretty much are already there aren't we? Real systems have become so complex that we can't formally reason about them anymore. Instead, we rely on heuristics, experience, and experimentation to maintain them.

Take live/interactive computations, for example. I've written plenty of these systems where things become so harry that I rely on non-deterministic behavior that come to a certain equilibream during execution. Modularity in these systems is still important, but this modularity is very much organic.

By Sean McDirmid at Tue, 2010-11-09 02:19 | login or register to post comments

How about programming an

How about programming an agent that will "go in" and debug your up and running system...

By Ehud Lamm at Wed, 2010-11-10 06:16 | login or register to post comments

More likely, you'll see more

More likely, you'll see more reliance on diagnostic tools that continuously probe system behavior and look for anomalies. Developers then become doctors and SE turns into something like House TV episodes...

By Sean McDirmid at Wed, 2010-11-10 06:59 | login or register to post comments

Totally. I am just not sure

Totally. I am just not sure the correct grammatical tense for these sentences is the future tense.

By Ehud Lamm at Wed, 2010-11-10 07:52 | login or register to post comments

Indeed, we "pretty much" are

Indeed, we "pretty much" are there, I suspect, too.

We pretty much are already there aren't we?

Btw, I'd even risk: sometimes it feels to me that even something like the medical field (even though dealing with authentic living things... us!) has way less of a hard time (than other folks in C.S ... wink!) when dealing with/accepting the basics of wording about its object of study, precisely.

I mean, for one, and AFAIK, the vast majority of physicians seemingly agree without "super-easy-to-trigger"-debates on what is to be called "the head" as opposed to "(just) the skull", what's "biceps" vs. "triceps" (where they exactly are, what exactly are their resp. specifics), ... etc, etc! ;-)

By Cyril at Wed, 2010-11-10 07:18 | login or register to post comments