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Neat, but

he clearly has never debugged COM bordello on Windows, because one simply cannot do it without "deciding to stop goofing off and starting applying the scientific method". To figure out what the heck 0x8C123456 for an error code means and what triggers it, you make conjectures, run experiments, go for repeatable results across multiple testbeds and frequently solicit peer review of the results. "Not a scientist"? Ha!

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Not that particular software no, but I'm used my share of dreck. Maybe I guessed where the problem was and used experimentation to validate, but I would hardly call that the scientific method.

Programmers do you an abbreviated form of the scientific when debugging. Its that we wear many hats actually. But whatever, its not a big deal for those in industry.

For those of us doing academic research, however, the science part of computer science is much more an issue; e.g. should a conference accept design papers without empirical evidence?

It was a joke, dude.

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