4 ms·

I agree that debugging is about attitude. Above all debugging is about acknowledging your understanding and/or assumptions are wrong and revisiting then. I woul

I agree that debugging is about attitude. Above all debugging is about acknowledging your understanding and/or assumptions are wrong and revisiting then. I would also say debugging is the punishment for your mistakes,and oh boy it can be extremely punishing. I associate debugging with pain and resilience. From me debugging is taking some problem and testing assumptions and models until you zero in on the only possible place where the issue can be. This zeroing in can be of different orders. Impossible conditions being met does not mean they were met, just that somehow your program reached a state where they are considered met. PS: coming from an embedded and systems programing i was going to dismiss css debugging as a joke but then I realized I have been wasting huge amounts of time getting ridiculously simple things like centering a logo on my web site....again debugging teaches humbleness and punishes self centered bullshit.

baby 7y ago
> I would also say debugging is the punishment for your mistakes or other people's mistakes
saagarjha 7y ago
> I would also say debugging is the punishment for your mistakes,and oh boy it can be extremely punishing. Well…not always. I actually like debugging, especially when the bug isn’t mine and I’m not in too much of a rush. Diving into a completely new codebase, trying to make sense of the behavior and come up with ways to infer things through the lens the tooling gives you, and finally zeroing in on the problematic code and sending a patch can be quite satisfying. It’s even better when you learn something new and have a good war story to tell about it. (The message was being forwarded through what?! You can do that?!)
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > especially when the bug isn’t mine and I’m not in too much of a rush. Worry-free debugging. That's the life. Also, it's always great to be the one handing out the dunce cap rather than the one wearing it.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    There’s no need to pull out a dunce cap every time you debug; many times the bug is complicated enough that you feel great finding it but can’t fault the person who wrote the code.

baby 7y ago

> I would also say debugging is the punishment for your mistakes or other people's mistakes

saagarjha 7y ago

> I would also say debugging is the punishment for your mistakes,and oh boy it can be extremely punishing. Well…not always. I actually like debugging, especially when the bug isn’t mine and I’m not in too much of a rush. Diving into a completely new codebase, trying to make sense of the behavior and come up with ways to infer things through the lens the tooling gives you, and finally zeroing in on the problematic code and sending a patch can be quite satisfying. It’s even better when you learn something new and have a good war story to tell about it. (The message was being forwarded through what?! You can do that?!)

dntbnmpls 7y ago
> especially when the bug isn’t mine and I’m not in too much of a rush. Worry-free debugging. That's the life. Also, it's always great to be the one handing out the dunce cap rather than the one wearing it.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  There’s no need to pull out a dunce cap every time you debug; many times the bug is complicated enough that you feel great finding it but can’t fault the person who wrote the code.