DH on editing

DH, who programs midrange computers for a living, has been reading through Shadows. This afternoon he plopped down on the couch beside me to take a break and watch some golf.

"You know," he said, "it's amazing how similar editing is to debugging."

I blinked. "Huh?"

"Well, think about it," he said. "You go through it, you identify the problems, you fix the problems. Then you go through it again and again, till you get rid of all the problems. It's iterative. Cyclical. Repetitive. Just like debugging."

"Uh... I never thought about it like that." (Probably because what I know about programming computers could be written on the head of a pin with lots of room to spare.)

"Of course," he added, "in your case, the process is more like go through it, identify all the problems, fix the ones you feel like fixing, and then try to send it back to your editor before you're actually done."

I bristled. "I do not."

"Sure you do." He smiled smugly. "That's why you've got me."