Hypothesis-driven debugging

Explanation or usage

A reproducible failure and a small discriminating test help distinguish competing explanations. Changing many unrelated things at once makes results hard to interpret. A fix should address the cause and be checked against the original failure.

Common misunderstandings

Making an error disappear once proves the underlying cause was fixed.

In The Pragmatic Programmer

General context reviewed · book attribution and sources pending

In software debugging, investigate reproducible failures using original examples, and consider whether the tools or environment could be contributing causes.