(no subject)

Debugging requires a particular sympathy for the machine. You must be able to run the machine and networks of machines in your mind while simulating what-ifs based on mere wisps of insight.

There's another process that is surprisingly similar to debugging: hunting down serial killers.

>You have to be able to re-create the crime scene in your head. You need to know as much as you can
>about the victim so that you can imagine how she might have reacted. You have to be able to put
>yourself in her place as the attacker threatens her with a gun or a knife, a rock, his fists, or
>whatever. You have to be able to feel her fear as he approaches her. You have to be able to feel
>her pain as he rapes her or beats her or cuts her. You have to try to imagine what she was going
>through when he tortured her for his sexual gratification. You have to understand what it’s like to
>scream in terror and agony, realizing that it won’t help, that it won’t get him to stop. You have
>to know what it was like. And that is a heavy burden to have to carry.

Todd Hoff