Heisenbug

How it is used

Used informally in debugging discussions. Timing changes from logging or debugging can hide the underlying failure.

Example sentences

1. The team called it a Heisenbug because adding a log line stopped the crash.

   The observation changed execution enough to conceal the failure, rather than fixing its cause.

2. Our Heisenbug appeared only when the debugger was detached from the worker.

   Normal execution and observed execution had different conditions affecting the symptom.

Common collocations

• investigate a Heisenbug
• elusive Heisenbug

Related terms

• debuggerA tool that lets you pause a running program, go through it line by line and look at the values of variables to find out why it misbehaves.
• reproduceTo make a bug happen again on purpose by following the same steps, so that you can see it yourself and find its cause.

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

• bug
• fix
• debug
• crash
• log
• stack trace
• root cause
• workaround
• exception
• breakpoint
• error message
• troubleshoot