Amazing what a break from looking at code can do to help
you fix a bug.
Back in 2004, I had been writing articles explaining
different sorting algorithms, how they worked, and how to
implement them in C (and in most cases, how to implement
them more efficiently than the "standard textbook way").
Well, I had gotten distracted around the time I had been
working on an article for Quick Sort and never got around to
finishing it. I remember having a bug in my QuickSort
routine somewhere that I wasn't able to find after a few
nights of looking at it and having had more pressing things
to attend to, set it aside for later (but not before
documenting a few test cases that failed and how they failed).
Well, yesterday, after coming across that code, I opened
it up in my trusty Emacs editor and in just a few minutes
had a solution... it was basically a simple one-off bug.
Not long after, I got a call from someone at Google who
had seen my resume and repeatedly told me they found it
"interesting". I have no idea what that means, exactly, but
I take it that it's a Good Thing(tm) :)