{"id":588,"date":"2006-05-06T00:26:38","date_gmt":"2006-05-06T00:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/588"},"modified":"2006-05-06T00:26:38","modified_gmt":"2006-05-06T00:26:38","slug":"on-demos-and-heisenbugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/588","title":{"rendered":"On demos and Heisenbugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I were to write a kind of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying<\/em> kind of guide to giving demos of your research, it would probably include the following list of things to avoid:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Infrastructure:<\/strong> the only time people notice the plumbing is when it doesn’t work, and the challenges involved are subtle and non-obvious. Stick with pretty interfaces that demo themselves.<\/li>\n
  2. Multiple caches:<\/strong> Cached information can mask what’s really going on in a system and change the results from one demo to the next. This is even worse when some of those caches involve software that isn’t yours.<\/li>\n
  3. Multiple threads:<\/strong> Multi-threaded applications are a bear to debug, and are a great way to introduce race conditions and deadlocks that invariably only pop up when you’re giving a demo to someone important.<\/li>\n
  4. Anything involving networking:<\/strong> Networks are complex and cantankerous creatures that can fail for a number of reasons beyond your control.<\/li>\n
  5. Wireless:<\/strong> That goes double for wireless. Especially since wireless acts differently when you’re in a room full of audience members who all have their own laptops out and broadcasting.<\/li>\n
  6. Asynchronous communications:<\/strong> Throw in multiple machines (read: multiple potential failure points) where the same exact user action might produce different effects depending on the timing of how messages are sent and you’ve got a situation where you can successfully test the same demo 10 times in a row and still not know for sure if it’ll work on the 11th try.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Never one to take the easy route, my current research project contains every one of these features. No matter how many successful trials I run, I never really know whether this<\/i> time it’ll go boom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If I were to write a kind of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying<\/em> kind of guide to giving demos of your research, it would probably include the following list of things to avoid:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Infrastructure:<\/strong> the only time people notice the plumbing is when it doesn’t work, and the challenges involved are subtle and non-obvious. Stick with pretty interfaces that demo themselves.<\/li>\n
    2. Multiple caches:<\/strong> Cached information can mask what’s really going on in a system and change the results from one demo to the next. This is even worse when some of those caches involve software that isn’t yours.<\/li>\n
    3. Multiple threads:<\/strong> Multi-threaded applications are a bear to debug, and are a great way to introduce race conditions and deadlocks that invariably only pop up when you’re giving a demo to someone important.<\/li>\n
    4. Anything involving networking:<\/strong> Networks are complex and cantankerous creatures that can fail for a number of reasons beyond your control.<\/li>\n
    5. Wireless:<\/strong> That goes double for wireless. Especially since wireless acts differently when you’re in a room full of audience members who all have their own laptops out and broadcasting.<\/li>\n
    6. Asynchronous communications:<\/strong> Throw in multiple machines (read: multiple potential failure points) where the same exact user action might produce different effects depending on the timing of how messages are sent and you’ve got a situation where you can successfully test the same demo 10 times in a row and still not know for sure if it’ll work on the 11th try.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Never one to take the easy route, my current research project contains every one of these features. No matter how many successful trials I run, I never really know whether this<\/i> time it’ll go boom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}