Sunday, November 28, 2010

Bugs in the Bazaar

In his paper The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond makes the astute observation that, with enough eyes looking at program source code, all bugs become shallow problems. From personal experience, I completely agree with this assertion. Anyone who has worked on a group programming project has probably had this experience: after pulling out your hair for hours trying to debug, one of your coworkers comes along and—after less than a minute—points out the source of the error. Sometimes the original coder is too familiar with his “perfect” design to see the bug, but many times the biggest factor in why one person finds the problem obvious when another doesn’t is just their different thought processes. This is the strength of the bazaar in debugging: hundreds of developers, each with their unique way of thinking, rooting out your bugs for you.

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