[khazhoux]

What's the word for this:

* My code doesn't work and I can't find the bug even after over an hour

* I add a few lines of <whatever code>. Now it works!

* Now, just for comparison, I remove all the code I just added (or, at least I think I reverted back to previous state). But now it still works.

???

[maicro]

That could probably be called a Heisenbug[0]: A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it.

Though it depends on the cause - as others in this comment chain said, if it's just that the file isn't actually being updated between tests, but adding a new line forces an update/recompile/etc., I'm not sure what you'd call it.

[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/heisenbug.html

[nope1000]

Once I added a comment and my bug went away. That was when I went home for the day.

[marcosdumay]

There's the alternative:

* The program works flawlessly

* Somebody finds a bug on the code that is executed in a test

* The relevant test now fails consistently

Both are probably because you changed something on the environment when you looked at the code.

[omoikane]

Another common cause is that the code you were looking at wasn't actually the code you were running. Between "I added this line and then I removed this same line, and now it works", the executable might have been recompiled.

[bobthepanda]

hot reloading can cause weird behaviors like this in particular

[woranl]

I get that a lot, just have to restart that Docker desktop to push the saved changes to volume.

[oneshtein]

Clock skew?

Makefile (or a similar build system which uses timestamps) + a problem with wall clock -> stale files.

[flerchin]

Choose an editor with autosave to fix this one.

[recursive]

Now you have two problems.

[colkassad]

DevOps

[rozenmd]

cache?