https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/06/30/rubik-cubed/feed/PJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usWed, 10 Jun 2026 02:41:56 -0400<![CDATA[Imagine debugging a million lines of code. How would you do it? The problem is a harder than simply finding the time. My old textbook reference suggests using the strategy of &#8220;test sets&#8221;. Put data in and check to see it is processed correctly. Sounds good, but the problem with this approach is that most programs have infinite sets of legal inputs, and therefore infinite numbers of test sets, any one of which might show up a bug. Another tack would be to prove that a program&#8217;s steps were mathematically correct. The practical difficulties of trying this on a million line code base are easy to imagine. But we&#8217;re not out of moves yet. One thing we can try is to prove the correctness of the program by parts; in effect showing that certain blocks will always be produce a true result given a legal input. Why am I talking about debugging million line programs? Because someone is so sick of incomprehensible, pork-laden legislation with all kinds of scams embedded in it that he has proposed a 28th Amendment. Bob Gale writes:]]>Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:17:52 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2009/06/30/rubik-cubed-n188700