In principle, I couldn't agree more. I get this from time to time, someone is stumped on an exception and after seeing it, I usually go "well, it's a null point

In principle, I couldn't agree more. I get this from time to time, someone is stumped on an exception and after seeing it, I usually go "well, it's a null pointer exception in this method, so from looking at the code, it could come from these 3 places". The pattern I see there is that a) in release builds, exceptions on many platforms suck. Things get inlined, parts of the stack trace are missing etc. If you understand why that is, that's not so much of a problem. But: b) people often have this Voodoo-like mentality about this. They often see the 100th stack trace that doesn't make much sense and try to wing it, because that's obviously always the case. The best thing you can do look at them together: Lead by example, think aloud and you might just teach someone how to read it in a better way. It's rather important you have a consistent and accurate mental model of why your stack traces are mangled, lest you end up like one of those beasts that got random treats in B.F. Skinner's experiments and ended up with the strangest behaviors possible :-)