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> shotgun approach to science...random experiments

Not sure where you get that from someone extolling the empirical scientific method and science in general.

You obviously don't type random strings until by chance you hit on something.

Scientific method includes cycles of hypothesis, experiment, validation/refutation.

If you present your view as a simplistic dichotomy, you should not be surprised when it is taken as such, and if you put questions in your post, you should not be surprised if someone answers them.

The dichotomy was between experimentalists and code-starers. Not between random-code-typers and code-starers.

Your characterization of 'code-starers' is a caricature, and the questions you posed suggested that you did not fully understand the scientific method. TeMPOral's post was a reasonable response to it.

And "code-staring" is also not simply running your hand over what "must" be right and continually asserting that the bug is "impossible". It is exactly the step of debugging that informs the hypothesis to be tested.

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