Software Diagnostics Metaphors

Software Diagnostics as Archaeology

Analogy: studying software execution artifacts and traces left in artefacts by software execution. Traces themselves may have undergone ageing, e.g. memory overwrites. Root Cause Analysis uses mechanisms from Software Internals to understand causal connections and reconstruct original software execution context.

  • Sociology - Software Internals
  • Archeology - Software Diagnostics
  • History - Root Cause Analysis

Software Diagnostics as Psychology

Analogy: studying how code construction ideas are executed.

  • Philosophy - Software Construction
  • Psychology - Software Diagnostics
  • Physiology - Software Execution

Software Diagnostics as Literary Criticism

Analogy: studying patterns across software execution artefacts such as software narratives (traces and logs) and memory snapshots.

  • Writing Fiction - Software Construction
  • Reading Fiction - Software Execution
  • Reviewing Fiction - Traditional Software Diagnostics
  • Literary Criticism - Pattern-Oriented Software Diagnostics