14 years ago, in June 2007, Alex Gorbachev, then CTO of Pythian, founded the BAAG Party- Battle Against Any Guess - an initiative against any guesswork when solving technical problems. Even then, it was becoming a big problem: more and more often on forums and public mail lists for questions about specific problems, instead of asking for the necessary technical details, answers came in the spirit of “try this, if it doesn't help, try this”, “I used to I saw something similar, XXX helped me ”,“ XXX did not help me, but YYY helped ”. Various myths were born and gave rise to even more new ones, from there and any "shamanism" and "dances with a tambourine" (in part, and "works - do not touch"). All this is understandable: the complexity of software and hardware increases exponentially; the amount of inaccurate information a la "for dummies" on the Internet is growing like a snowball; The IT industry needs more and more workers on "conveyors" - "take more, throw on".The emergence of #BAAG then was absolutely natural and inevitable, but how relevant is it now? Why, after her heyday and popularity for several years, is she in oblivion? What and when should replace it at this period of IT development?
To begin with, I would like to quote an excerpt from Alex's interview :
What's wrong with making an educated guess? We have limited data, limited knowledge, limited experience, limited tools, and limited time. Can we ever really know?
"Yes we can!" At least, we should strive to know ....
Most real life problems can be solved with the knowledge that is available in the public domain, using data that is possible to extract by applying the right experience and tools and taking enough time to do the job properly.
It is the purpose of the Battle to promote the importance of knowledge fighting ignorance, selecting the right tools for the job, popularizing the appropriate troubleshooting techniques, gaining experience, and learning to take time to diagnose the issue before applying the solution. One might think that the BAAG motto is a bit extreme but that's a political decision to emphasize the importance of the goal.
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When I established the Battle Against Any Guess Party, a number of people argued that guesswork is the cruel reality with Oracle databases because sometimes we do hit the wall of the unknown. The argument is that at such point, there is nothing else left but to employ guesswork. Several times people have thrown out the refined term “educated guess.” However, I would argue that even in these cases, or especially in these cases, we should be applying scientific techniques. Two good techniques are deduction and induction.
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