Sherlock Holmes debugging...

Sherlock Holmes debugging...  I never thought of it quite like this, but the general technique described (working backwards from the symptoms) is what I think of as normal debugging.  I've observed before that software engineers who are really good at this are relatively rare, and they tend to be the same people who have a deep understanding of entire systems (not just a component or two).  I can add another observation: if you ask most software engineers how they feel about debugging, almost always they'll tell you that either they love it or they hate it.  There doesn't seem to be any middle ground.  And the ones who love it the ones who are likely to be very good at it...