5 ms·

Out of (morbid) curiosity - what was his objection to using a debugger?

rickreynoldssf 3y ago
Just that I used it at all. There's a contingent of engineers who feel using a debugger is a waste of time and or a sign of weakness. They're the ones who like to stare at code and "run it in their heads" and dump crazy amounts of "got here" into the logs. Evidently this guy is one of them.
- bb88 3y ago
  There's two reasons I think. (I have ~25 years experience) 1. In your code should know what the edge cases, loop condition issues, etc. I think this is fair. If you don't know the edge case failures when you write your code, you could end up with something like the Microsoft Xune that shutdown for an entire day over a leap year failure. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/original-microsoft-zune-confounded-by-leap-year-shuts-down/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/original-mic... Keep in mind that code review will probably not catch all bugs, it's up to the original coder to write it. This is particularly true if you're the best person on your team, say. Or you're working at a startup where no one can really review your code other than you. On the other hand well coded unit tests should help you here. 2. It's toxic brogrammer culture there -- where leetcode scores are all that matter. In which case it's probably best you were passed over.
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > 1. In your code should know what the edge cases, loop condition issues, etc. Perhaps, but: > It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. * https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/ Sometimes you want to go to 'first principles' and reassess your assumptions. As a sysadmin I sometimes I resort to making sure the thing is actually physically plugged in (OSI Layer 1), the move up the stack with regards to how the bits flow.
- jansan 3y ago
  I am one of these engineers, but I consider the "cowboy style" a weakness and bad habit and would never ever judge another engineer over using a debugger.
- nunez 3y ago
  I am personally not a fan of debuggers but I would never ding someone over using them unless it was obvious they couldn't debug without them.
- javajosh 3y ago
  Strange. Whenever I use a debugger I always get a lot out of it. The code never quite executes exactly the way you envision, even with passing tests. In Java, there is a strange emphasis on classes but I've always felt objects are more fundamental, and the debugger is the way to see them and their interactions.
geysersam 3y ago
Isn't it obvious? Using a debugger implies that you expect the code you write to have bugs. Not a mindset I'd like my coworkers to have.
- sethrin 3y ago
  Is this sarcasm or epic hubris? No-one writes bug-free code, and thinking otherwise sounds like an enormous red flag.
  - geysersam 3y ago
    At our org we originally only hired A+ people. The A+ people hired A++ people and so on. Eventually we ended up with only 10x programmers and since then we haven't written any bugs. If I get around to it I'll eventually write a book about this technique.
    - sethrin 3y ago
      What you say is impossible, and it's not worth my time to discover whether you're a liar or merely deluded.
      - frfl 3y ago
        this is sarcasm, OP is just having fun
- diego_moita 3y ago
  Not sure if you're trolling or just missed the "/s" tag. A much worse mindset is to be arrogant enough to assume the code has no bugs. As a matter of principle every code has bugs. Some bugs are found, some not.
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  It’s actually worse than that: using a debugger shows that you’ve written so much buggy code that you somehow learned that debuggers exist. Steer well clear of these people!
ninkendo 3y ago
Just to chime in with a different take from the rest of the comments: there’s lots of tools that aren’t really appropriate to use during an interview. If you’re being asked to do (say) tree traversal, then in real life it’s totally fine to Google it and copy/paste a code snippet. But during an interview, presumably they want to know how much you can do on your own without “help”. It’s not that much of a stretch to say that a debugger is a level of “help” that they want to see you do without during an interview. Using a debugger is a sign that you’re not sure what your code is doing and so you need “help”… maybe the interviewer was looking to see that they could fit the exercise in their head well enough to solve the problem without a debugger.
- rickreynoldssf 3y ago
  To add more context. The task included interfacing with a 3rd party API that was poorly documented. In order to even see what a response looked like would have been incredibly hard without a debugger. Dumping it to the console would have been many pages of nested JSON. So sitting there twiddling, trying to make sense of an API doc that didn't provide a clear description of the results rather than just run the thing and see what it did was the wrong way to go. A debugger is as much "help" to an engineer as a hammer is to a carpenter. In my experience, engineers who don't use one are a detriment to the entire engineering organization wasting time and money. Anyway, yeah I dodged a bullet on that but it's such a pain in the ass that I went though a two month interview process only to be vetoed at the end like that. During that time I spent about two weeks to learn an esoteric API that I'll never use again. Oh and it would have been highly unlikely that I would have even used that API in the job. It was just a requirement that I learned it for this particular interview. ...and no I'm not going to commit it to memory just so I can pass a coding interview and if that was the expectation then this whole situation is even more ridiculous.
  - ninkendo 3y ago
    Yeah, if the exercise is in using a poorly documented API, and the answer depends on fiddly bits of trivia around how the response is structured, then a debugger is absolutely the right approach, even during an interview. You did the right thing here, and the interviewer is a dummy.

Just that I used it at all. There's a contingent of engineers who feel using a debugger is a waste of time and or a sign of weakness. They're the ones who like to stare at code and "run it in their heads" and dump crazy amounts of "got here" into the logs. Evidently this guy is one of them.

bb88 3y ago
There's two reasons I think. (I have ~25 years experience) 1. In your code should know what the edge cases, loop condition issues, etc. I think this is fair. If you don't know the edge case failures when you write your code, you could end up with something like the Microsoft Xune that shutdown for an entire day over a leap year failure. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/original-microsoft-zune-confounded-by-leap-year-shuts-down/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/original-mic... Keep in mind that code review will probably not catch all bugs, it's up to the original coder to write it. This is particularly true if you're the best person on your team, say. Or you're working at a startup where no one can really review your code other than you. On the other hand well coded unit tests should help you here. 2. It's toxic brogrammer culture there -- where leetcode scores are all that matter. In which case it's probably best you were passed over.
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > 1. In your code should know what the edge cases, loop condition issues, etc. Perhaps, but: > It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. * https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/18/know-trouble/ Sometimes you want to go to 'first principles' and reassess your assumptions. As a sysadmin I sometimes I resort to making sure the thing is actually physically plugged in (OSI Layer 1), the move up the stack with regards to how the bits flow.
jansan 3y ago
I am one of these engineers, but I consider the "cowboy style" a weakness and bad habit and would never ever judge another engineer over using a debugger.
nunez 3y ago
I am personally not a fan of debuggers but I would never ding someone over using them unless it was obvious they couldn't debug without them.
javajosh 3y ago
Strange. Whenever I use a debugger I always get a lot out of it. The code never quite executes exactly the way you envision, even with passing tests. In Java, there is a strange emphasis on classes but I've always felt objects are more fundamental, and the debugger is the way to see them and their interactions.

geysersam 3y ago

Isn't it obvious? Using a debugger implies that you expect the code you write to have bugs. Not a mindset I'd like my coworkers to have.

sethrin 3y ago
Is this sarcasm or epic hubris? No-one writes bug-free code, and thinking otherwise sounds like an enormous red flag.
- geysersam 3y ago
  At our org we originally only hired A+ people. The A+ people hired A++ people and so on. Eventually we ended up with only 10x programmers and since then we haven't written any bugs. If I get around to it I'll eventually write a book about this technique.
  - sethrin 3y ago
    What you say is impossible, and it's not worth my time to discover whether you're a liar or merely deluded.
    - frfl 3y ago
      this is sarcasm, OP is just having fun
diego_moita 3y ago
Not sure if you're trolling or just missed the "/s" tag. A much worse mindset is to be arrogant enough to assume the code has no bugs. As a matter of principle every code has bugs. Some bugs are found, some not.
singleshot_ 3y ago
It’s actually worse than that: using a debugger shows that you’ve written so much buggy code that you somehow learned that debuggers exist. Steer well clear of these people!

ninkendo 3y ago

Just to chime in with a different take from the rest of the comments: there’s lots of tools that aren’t really appropriate to use during an interview. If you’re being asked to do (say) tree traversal, then in real life it’s totally fine to Google it and copy/paste a code snippet. But during an interview, presumably they want to know how much you can do on your own without “help”. It’s not that much of a stretch to say that a debugger is a level of “help” that they want to see you do without during an interview. Using a debugger is a sign that you’re not sure what your code is doing and so you need “help”… maybe the interviewer was looking to see that they could fit the exercise in their head well enough to solve the problem without a debugger.

rickreynoldssf 3y ago
To add more context. The task included interfacing with a 3rd party API that was poorly documented. In order to even see what a response looked like would have been incredibly hard without a debugger. Dumping it to the console would have been many pages of nested JSON. So sitting there twiddling, trying to make sense of an API doc that didn't provide a clear description of the results rather than just run the thing and see what it did was the wrong way to go. A debugger is as much "help" to an engineer as a hammer is to a carpenter. In my experience, engineers who don't use one are a detriment to the entire engineering organization wasting time and money. Anyway, yeah I dodged a bullet on that but it's such a pain in the ass that I went though a two month interview process only to be vetoed at the end like that. During that time I spent about two weeks to learn an esoteric API that I'll never use again. Oh and it would have been highly unlikely that I would have even used that API in the job. It was just a requirement that I learned it for this particular interview. ...and no I'm not going to commit it to memory just so I can pass a coding interview and if that was the expectation then this whole situation is even more ridiculous.
- ninkendo 3y ago
  Yeah, if the exercise is in using a poorly documented API, and the answer depends on fiddly bits of trivia around how the response is structured, then a debugger is absolutely the right approach, even during an interview. You did the right thing here, and the interviewer is a dummy.