3 ms·
> When something went wrong, I'd reflexively start to dig in to the problem, examining stack traces, sticking in print statements, invoking a debugger, and so o
by 0xfaded 10y ago
> When something went wrong, I'd reflexively start to dig in to the problem, examining stack traces, sticking in print statements, invoking a debugger, and so on. But Ken would just stand and think, ignoring me and the code we'd just written. After a while I noticed a pattern: Ken would often understand the problem before I would, and would suddenly announce, "I know what's wrong." He was usually correct. I realized that Ken was building a mental model of the code and when something broke it was an error in the model. By thinking about how that problem could happen, he'd intuit where the model was wrong or where our code must not be satisfying the model.
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206 http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1941206
- lmm 10y agoI've found the opposite. Maybe "Ken" could do it, but most programmers who think they can can't. I've had three programmers spend three days thinking about a problem to no avail, and then fired up a debugger and tracked it down in half an hour. Never be too proud to use your tools.