4 ms·

I have to say, I can't understand the author's glee while investigating the bug. To me, bugs are a source of irritation. Like the author, I also like to get to

by jolmg 7y ago

I have to say, I can't understand the author's glee while investigating the bug. To me, bugs are a source of irritation. Like the author, I also like to get to the bottom of them instead of resorting to reinstalling and resetting a wide area of stuff to make it go away, but I do it because the existence of the bug is irritating. This person seems to do it because investigating seems to be a source of joy for them. For me, investigating is a frustrating necessity to fix the bug.

nwallin 7y ago
It depends on the codebase and the person I suppose. In my personal projects, I prefer greenfield programming, because I can write code embracing modern C++ features that ensure correctness by construction. At work I'm saddled with C#'s shitty ecosystem that doesn't play well with its shitty async stack, and generations of old C++ paradigms that precludes things like constexpr, const correctness, static_assert, we use COM smart pointers instead of shared_ptr, (with no weak_ptr equivalent) shitty naming conventions where variable names are only a repeat of the type, etc. My greenfield work code at work is basically guaranteed to be buggy. I ain't that smart yo. At work, I enjoy fixing bugs. I get to challenge the assumptions of Microsoft and the juggernauts of my corporation's OG Architects. And I get to win. I fight the man and I win. This afternoon I pointed out a bug in code written by a programmer who's been with the company for 20 years. He's the dev lead over a 70 person team. A weeks ago I fixed a bug in our software's core architecture which has been touched by many of the important people in our org. At home I wear sweat pants. At work I wear a cape. Fixing bugs is awesome.
kelnos 7y ago
Diff'rent strokes, I guess. For some people the detective work itself is incredibly rewarding, sometimes even more than finding the solution. It's good that these people exist!
q3k 7y ago
I'm more on the side of the author - I really enjoy hunting down and solving very difficult/odd/surprising bugs, at least every so often. It lets me exercise my generalist ('full stack') muscles, for instance going from a high-level application issue to reading/debugging kernel code.
- jolmg 7y ago
  > very difficult/odd/surprising bugs I guess it's a matter of attitude or codebase. At least at the point where I find the cause, I don't often think, "wow, that was a difficult/odd/surprising bug", I think "Wow, that was a dumb mistake someone did (perhaps me, perhaps not)" or "Wow, such a mess of code. It's no wonder this mistake was so easy to make". That is, the end of the journey or the journey itself is often one of disappointment. That's what makes it frustrating for me. It's also a matter of how refactorings are prioritized in one's organization. In the journey I end up feeling like the observed bug is just the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be fixed, but technical debt may have low prioritization, so you end up feeling disappointed of only chopping off that tip of the iceberg and leaving everything else that's submerged. As time goes by, these tips pop up more and more often, and the ice below the surface also grows. I find that demoralizing. I'll try to enjoy the journey more. I know it can be done even for our codebase because I have a coworker that seems to enjoy the bugs just like the author here. Though, sometimes I think my attitude towards bugs is the healthy one.
  - hashhar 7y ago
    I agree 100% with you. Thanks for writing it out in a better way than I ever would. I think the main cause for how we feel is the lack of focus on refactoring things and repaying tech debt within our orgs.
carapace 7y ago
Most programmers are complexity junkies getting paid to feed their habit.
- pengaru 7y ago
  > Most programmers are complexity junkies getting paid to feed their habit. Maybe more so today, but historically I've come to appreciate programmers as megalomaniacal control freaks - myself included, which programming allows them to exercise within the harmless confines of an imaginary world hosted by microprocessors and the attached storage. It has been evolving though. Computers became networked, now software controls much of the real world, it's far less harmless than before. We also used to strive for minimizing complexity, I'm not sure how much of that was intentional or just a consequence of limited space while RAM was so expensive.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    > We also used to strive for minimizing complexity, I'm not sure how much of that was intentional or just a consequence of limited space while RAM was so expensive. Though I hate to admit it, I think it's the latter. We're now more able to shift complexity. We can add a big complexity layer (a framework, for example, with someone else being responsible for it) to avoid some complexity in another layer. The trouble comes when you need to understand the whole, including the layer you're not responsible for, to understand how that layer is affecting you.
chongli 7y ago
It depends on the person. Most people would agree that murder is terrible but some people enjoy the process of investigating a murder. It’s so enjoyable, in fact, that a huge genre of novels, film, and television series have spawned from it. People spend large amounts of time creating murder stories for others to enjoy through all these media. Stop and think about how weird this is for a moment. Imagine a video game or something where you had to find and fix bugs in fictional software. That’s how weird it is.
- deaddodo 7y ago
  Zachtronics games come to mind. Also: Factorio, SpaceChem, etc are all along the same lines.
  - chongli 7y ago
    I love Zachtronics games. I’m one of those weird people who like debugging fictional software. Still weird though!
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
In the long long ago I used to enjoy chasing down bugs to their source and fixing them, but technology ground that out of me. I used to believe, deep down, that things generally worked and made sense so if I dug to the root of the problem and fixed it things would be better forever. Sadly, this is not the case. Instead complexity just keeps getting piled on top of complexity forever, bugs just get more frequent and harder to diagnose, and just about when you've finally ironed shit out some jackasses come along and decide to rewrite everything with a new layer of complexity or two in there. Fuck that. I don't have time for this shit anymore. If it doesn't work and I can't fix it in a few minutes I just use something else or revert to a previous version. I don't even bother to file bug reports because it is my experience that no developer cares about bugs they don't personally encounter anyway, and regardless will make me waste even more of my time collecting logs and shit. There are major projects out there with paid developers working on them that have 10+ year open bug reports for fuck sake.
outworlder 7y ago
Bugs are not enjoyable. Squashing them is.

by jolmg 7y ago

nwallin 7y ago

It depends on the codebase and the person I suppose. In my personal projects, I prefer greenfield programming, because I can write code embracing modern C++ features that ensure correctness by construction. At work I'm saddled with C#'s shitty ecosystem that doesn't play well with its shitty async stack, and generations of old C++ paradigms that precludes things like constexpr, const correctness, static_assert, we use COM smart pointers instead of shared_ptr, (with no weak_ptr equivalent) shitty naming conventions where variable names are only a repeat of the type, etc. My greenfield work code at work is basically guaranteed to be buggy. I ain't that smart yo. At work, I enjoy fixing bugs. I get to challenge the assumptions of Microsoft and the juggernauts of my corporation's OG Architects. And I get to win. I fight the man and I win. This afternoon I pointed out a bug in code written by a programmer who's been with the company for 20 years. He's the dev lead over a 70 person team. A weeks ago I fixed a bug in our software's core architecture which has been touched by many of the important people in our org. At home I wear sweat pants. At work I wear a cape. Fixing bugs is awesome.

kelnos 7y ago

Diff'rent strokes, I guess. For some people the detective work itself is incredibly rewarding, sometimes even more than finding the solution. It's good that these people exist!

q3k 7y ago

I'm more on the side of the author - I really enjoy hunting down and solving very difficult/odd/surprising bugs, at least every so often. It lets me exercise my generalist ('full stack') muscles, for instance going from a high-level application issue to reading/debugging kernel code.

jolmg 7y ago
> very difficult/odd/surprising bugs I guess it's a matter of attitude or codebase. At least at the point where I find the cause, I don't often think, "wow, that was a difficult/odd/surprising bug", I think "Wow, that was a dumb mistake someone did (perhaps me, perhaps not)" or "Wow, such a mess of code. It's no wonder this mistake was so easy to make". That is, the end of the journey or the journey itself is often one of disappointment. That's what makes it frustrating for me. It's also a matter of how refactorings are prioritized in one's organization. In the journey I end up feeling like the observed bug is just the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be fixed, but technical debt may have low prioritization, so you end up feeling disappointed of only chopping off that tip of the iceberg and leaving everything else that's submerged. As time goes by, these tips pop up more and more often, and the ice below the surface also grows. I find that demoralizing. I'll try to enjoy the journey more. I know it can be done even for our codebase because I have a coworker that seems to enjoy the bugs just like the author here. Though, sometimes I think my attitude towards bugs is the healthy one.
- hashhar 7y ago
  I agree 100% with you. Thanks for writing it out in a better way than I ever would. I think the main cause for how we feel is the lack of focus on refactoring things and repaying tech debt within our orgs.

carapace 7y ago

Most programmers are complexity junkies getting paid to feed their habit.

pengaru 7y ago
> Most programmers are complexity junkies getting paid to feed their habit. Maybe more so today, but historically I've come to appreciate programmers as megalomaniacal control freaks - myself included, which programming allows them to exercise within the harmless confines of an imaginary world hosted by microprocessors and the attached storage. It has been evolving though. Computers became networked, now software controls much of the real world, it's far less harmless than before. We also used to strive for minimizing complexity, I'm not sure how much of that was intentional or just a consequence of limited space while RAM was so expensive.
- jolmg 7y ago
  > We also used to strive for minimizing complexity, I'm not sure how much of that was intentional or just a consequence of limited space while RAM was so expensive. Though I hate to admit it, I think it's the latter. We're now more able to shift complexity. We can add a big complexity layer (a framework, for example, with someone else being responsible for it) to avoid some complexity in another layer. The trouble comes when you need to understand the whole, including the layer you're not responsible for, to understand how that layer is affecting you.

chongli 7y ago

It depends on the person. Most people would agree that murder is terrible but some people enjoy the process of investigating a murder. It’s so enjoyable, in fact, that a huge genre of novels, film, and television series have spawned from it. People spend large amounts of time creating murder stories for others to enjoy through all these media. Stop and think about how weird this is for a moment. Imagine a video game or something where you had to find and fix bugs in fictional software. That’s how weird it is.

deaddodo 7y ago
Zachtronics games come to mind. Also: Factorio, SpaceChem, etc are all along the same lines.
- chongli 7y ago
  I love Zachtronics games. I’m one of those weird people who like debugging fictional software. Still weird though!

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

In the long long ago I used to enjoy chasing down bugs to their source and fixing them, but technology ground that out of me. I used to believe, deep down, that things generally worked and made sense so if I dug to the root of the problem and fixed it things would be better forever. Sadly, this is not the case. Instead complexity just keeps getting piled on top of complexity forever, bugs just get more frequent and harder to diagnose, and just about when you've finally ironed shit out some jackasses come along and decide to rewrite everything with a new layer of complexity or two in there. Fuck that. I don't have time for this shit anymore. If it doesn't work and I can't fix it in a few minutes I just use something else or revert to a previous version. I don't even bother to file bug reports because it is my experience that no developer cares about bugs they don't personally encounter anyway, and regardless will make me waste even more of my time collecting logs and shit. There are major projects out there with paid developers working on them that have 10+ year open bug reports for fuck sake.

outworlder 7y ago

Bugs are not enjoyable. Squashing them is.