1722: Debugging

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 13:12, 19 August 2016 by Elektrizikekswerk (talk | contribs) (Transcript)
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Debugging
When you Google an error message and it gets no results, you can be pretty sure you've found a clue to the location of Martin's sword.
Title text: When you Google an error message and it gets no results, you can be pretty sure you've found a clue to the location of Martin's sword.

Explanation

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This strip shows Cueball and White Hat talking about debugging. This refers to the fact that finding out what is wrong with a given problem (known as 'debugging', hence the title) can become increasingly difficult. Cueball describes this process, with the process he is going through becoming more and more obscure, unexpectedly revealing that he found the Sword of Martin the Warrior, a character of the Redwall series. This refers to the fact that a complicated riddled path was devised in the series that would lead to the sword. This is similar to debugging, as it involves following clues to achieve an answer, but apart from that, they are entirely different. This is pointed out by White Hat.

Transcript

[White Hat and Cueball are walking side by side]
Cueball: I was trying to figure out why my browser was acting weird.
Cueball: Turns out it wasn't the browser - the issue was with my keyboard driver.
Cueball: Debugging that led me to a mysterious error message from a system utility...
[White Hat turns around and looks at Cueball]
Cueball: Anyway, long story short, I found the sword of Martin the Warrior.
White Hat: I think at some point there you switched puzzles.


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Discussion

Cueball is describing the familiar experience of hunting down bugs through convoluted steps. There's obviously a leap from debugging a computer issue to finding a fictional sword.

Sword of Martin the Warrior is a reference to [1] from the Redwall series of books. The sword has passed through the ownership of many characters in its time.

Anyone notice how small the sword is? ----

141.101.98.42 12:40, 19 August 2016 (UTC)--swampers

The keyboard problem could be the sword stuck (or hidden) in it. 141.101.98.15 11:12, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Google'ing for an error message. 99% of the internet doesn't understand that concept. *sigh* --108.162.237.220 15:13, 21 August 2016 (UTC)


Seems like the issue was with the mouse, not the keyboard, after all. --108.162.221.29 03:01, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Personally I find it even more irritating when googling an error message gives results... but those results are only for the source code of the program giving the error. Which invariably is not commented well enough to actually describe what the error code means, let alone potential ways to fix it. What do others think is the most irritating? No results, or source code results? 141.101.98.92 15:01, 22 August 2016 (UTC)


My dad used to call Sierra when their games crashed, and he'd give them the error code, and about half the time they went "Wow! Nobody's ever gotten that one before! What happened?!". Dad, fortunately, found this amusing. 108.162.237.134 04:25, 7 September 2016 (UTC)