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> Usually if you can do that, the bug's as good as solved Which is why you should try hard to do it :) A lot of people... do other things instead. Maybe the w
by BurningFrog 3y ago
> Usually if you can do that, the bug's as good as solved
Which is why you should try hard to do it :)
A lot of people... do other things instead.
Maybe the worst is trying to think up a solution.
My book about debugging would be called "Stop Thinking and Start Looking!", if I wrote it.
- jahewson 3y agoThis is something that never gets old to me - seeing other experienced devs playing guessing games instead of instrumenting the problem thing and walking through it step by step. That’s not to say that you can’t guess the first, or second place to look, but that’s where it should end. The second thing I see often from smart devs is that they find some bug, assume it’s the one they came looking for and declare victory. The third is the worse by far, which is to blame the cloud provider/vendor for all issues, especially you not reading their documentation.
- AlbertCory 3y agoSomewhere in that hierarchy is: Preemptively give up and say, "We can't reproduce that."
- francois14 3y agoWe work with the same contractors then.
- kqr 3y agoMore generally, if people would go and see for themselves more often a lot would be better in the world. Mere observation is surprisingly powerful if you take the time to do it with an open mind.
- funcDropShadow 3y agoDavid Agans' book "Debugging" has a chapter called "Quit Thinking and Look". It is quite old by IT standards, but I cannot recommend it enough.
- BurningFrog 3y agoWow! I've never seen or heard anyone else express that idea before! I guess I don't have to write that book then :)
- AlbertCory 3y agoI know this topic is pretty exhausted, but hey... In the terrible movie The Internship they have this "contest" for the interns, where they're all told of a server that has suddenly stopped serving up digital photos. So they all start writing on a glass wall. No intern says, "hey, let's go and look at the server logs!" Not cinematic, I guess.