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18 Apr 2014
Talking about Debugging with the Ruby Rogues

I got to hang out and chat about debugging with the Ruby Rogues! I was totally flattered to be invited to be their guest for Ruby Rogues episode 150: The Debugging Mindset with Danielle Sucher, and had lots of fun recording the show.

It was so fantastic to just get to chat about science and problem-solving and trying to get better about putting our egos aside and really evaluating the evidence before us with such a great group of people.

It started like this…

DAVID: I bought a microscope yesterday. And there was a splotch on it and I couldn’t figure out what it is and I did the scientific method trying to figure out where in the microscope the splotch was coming from. Turns out, I was seeing a reflection of my optic nerve.

JAMES: Nice.

[Chuckles]

JOSH: Yeah, you can look in the microscope a really long time and you won’t find that.

DAVID: Yeah.

DANIELLE: So, when you gaze into the microscope, the microscope gazes back into you.

[Laughter]

DAVID: Also gazes back to me, yeah.

JOSH: [inaudible] Are you saying that what you see inside Dave’s eyes is the abyss?

DAVID: Yes.

DANIELLE: Yeah, yeah.

JAMES: I just want to know how he proved that hypothesis false. Did he gouge one of his eyes out?

[Laughter]

DAVID: Actually, and this is the part that I was very, very proud of, I finally switched eyes. And the splotch moved and changed shape.

So brilliant!

And this was my favorite quote of mine from the episode:

"Look, the goal is to prove that I’m wrong. That means I win. I’ve proved that I was stupid about something so I can move on to being stupid about something more interesting."

Really, you can just check out the whole episode here. Have fun!