One subject of mystery, in Blogger lore, concerns the infamous "bX" codes.
One forum personality, long ago, compiled a blog listing several hundred known codes, and their supposed "diagnoses" - and would later use the blog as a reference, when advising how to solve a given "bX problem". That same person showed complete lack of understanding, in a single sentence.
In many cases, a "bX" code is simply a case of a Blogger Engineer trying to understand why one section of code is now, magically, causing another section of code to become active.
One of the most intriguing system problems, that I ever worked on, long ago, involved a hospital medical ordering system - and a doctor from Eastern Europe, who instinctively typed a "," when a "." was needed, when he was ordering medications for patients. Computer processes are very syntax sensitive - and a computer system that uses "," to separate sections of data from other sections of data, is going to have a problem with an unexpected ",", where a "." is expected.
To diagnose the problem, I had to keep the entire system (for a 1,000 bed hospital) offline for an hour, while I scanned the "console log", character by character, analysing the transaction that caused the problem. Discovering the cause of the problem required identifying this one doctor, recently arrived from Eastern Europe - and an obscure detail, knowing that people in Eastern Europe write numbers with "," and "." interchanged.
Blogger code is very complex, by necessity - from having to support people using different browsers with out of date versions - to having to support people who "confuse" syntactically essential "." and "," characters, and may write dates differently. And, Blogger code is in use on a 60 x 60 x 24 x 7 x 56 basis.
There is not one second in a 24 hour day, of a 365 (or 366) day year, that the Blogger service could ever be taken offline, worldwide, to diagnose one single "bX" related problem - let alone an entire hour, as was how the unexpected "," was diagnosed, so long ago.
That being the case, diagnosis of many Blogger problems starts with a very distributed and structured "console log", and "bX" diagnostic details. And that is all that many "bX" codes are - structured indexes into the Blogger code base, which are referenced by entries in the diagnostic logs.
There is no magic or mystery here, really. Just standard IT industry practice.
One forum personality, long ago, compiled a blog listing several hundred known codes, and their supposed "diagnoses" - and would later use the blog as a reference, when advising how to solve a given "bX problem". That same person showed complete lack of understanding, in a single sentence.
It's disheartening to see that the bx error code problems are still existing.The "bX" codes are not problems - they are simply symptoms of problems, identified using a canonical code structure.
In many cases, a "bX" code is simply a case of a Blogger Engineer trying to understand why one section of code is now, magically, causing another section of code to become active.
One of the most intriguing system problems, that I ever worked on, long ago, involved a hospital medical ordering system - and a doctor from Eastern Europe, who instinctively typed a "," when a "." was needed, when he was ordering medications for patients. Computer processes are very syntax sensitive - and a computer system that uses "," to separate sections of data from other sections of data, is going to have a problem with an unexpected ",", where a "." is expected.
To diagnose the problem, I had to keep the entire system (for a 1,000 bed hospital) offline for an hour, while I scanned the "console log", character by character, analysing the transaction that caused the problem. Discovering the cause of the problem required identifying this one doctor, recently arrived from Eastern Europe - and an obscure detail, knowing that people in Eastern Europe write numbers with "," and "." interchanged.
Blogger code is very complex, by necessity - from having to support people using different browsers with out of date versions - to having to support people who "confuse" syntactically essential "." and "," characters, and may write dates differently. And, Blogger code is in use on a 60 x 60 x 24 x 7 x 56 basis.
There is not one second in a 24 hour day, of a 365 (or 366) day year, that the Blogger service could ever be taken offline, worldwide, to diagnose one single "bX" related problem - let alone an entire hour, as was how the unexpected "," was diagnosed, so long ago.
That being the case, diagnosis of many Blogger problems starts with a very distributed and structured "console log", and "bX" diagnostic details. And that is all that many "bX" codes are - structured indexes into the Blogger code base, which are referenced by entries in the diagnostic logs.
There is no magic or mystery here, really. Just standard IT industry practice.
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