He's right, the "walking away" trick does work wonders some time. It gets you to relax, take a step back, and see the big picture. The other aspect to this is

He's right, the "walking away" trick does work wonders some time. It gets you to relax, take a step back, and see the big picture. The other aspect to this is reliance on Google. This is part stood out to me... I start to panic a little bit...I turn to google hoping for a quick fix and copy/paste one of my error messages into the search box. Unless Ruby/Rails error messages these days are completely anemic (I haven't worked with Rails in a while), then the line number and error message should provide enough clues to debug a misspelling without having to go to Google. Trust your analytic abilities -- it will keep you from that "panic" state. Instead of seeing an error and panicking, be like Stanley Moss in Wag the Dog -- "This is nothing" :) Eventually you'll get to a point like Paul Graham where debugging relaxes you: I like debugging: it's the one time that hacking is as straightforward as people think it is. You have a totally constrained problem, and all you have to do is solve it. Your program is supposed to do x. Instead it does y. Where does it go wrong? You know you're going to win in the end. It's as relaxing as painting a wall. Source: http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html