4 ms·
Basic debugging knowledge is helpful, but I've found the ability to think about distributed, networked systems all the way down at the system level to be extrem
by don-code 5y ago
Basic debugging knowledge is helpful, but I've found the ability to think about distributed, networked systems all the way down at the system level to be extremely helpful. We all encounter systems that are ill-documented, or complete black boxes, but peering at them with tools like `strace` / `jstack` (when a service is doing something itself with data) and `tcpdump` (when a service is asking another service to do something) opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Yes, distributed tracing tools do a much better job of this, but it's not always a given that a service will be instrumented. The generic tools (almost) always work.
- warrenm 5y agoIt always amazes me the number of people - especially programmers/developers - who absolutely can NOT read a stacktrace of any kind
- ozim 5y agoEspecially devs who have years of experience are surprising me when it turns out when I take over that error was abvious and right there in the exception with stack trace.
- warrenm 5y agoSometimes it's the problem of not being able to see what's there because you already [mentally] eliminated it But I agree - SO many times the error's hanging out right there in the stack trace, often to within a few characters or lines of the "real" error in the source!