3 ms·

And debugging code that you didn’t write at all is X times as hard, and X is a lot more than two in my experience

• kragen 3y ago
  actually i find it easier to debug other people's code than my own, because most bugs really only exist in your mind a bug is an inconsistency between what you intended a piece of code to do and the logical results of your design choices: for example, you thought for (i=0;i<=n;i++) would iterate n times, but actually it iterates n+1 times, as you can ascertain without ever touching a computer. it's a purely mental phenomenon the expectation that the code will do what you intended it to do makes it hard to understand what the code actually does. when i'm looking at someone else's code, i'm not burdened by a history of expecting the code to do anything this is why two people working on two separate projects will get less done than if they work together on one project for a week and then on the other project for a week: most bugs are shallow to anybody else's eyes the ones that aren't can be real doozies tho
  • akkartik 3y ago
    This is a really good point -- once you import somebody else's code into your head. Which I think imposes hard constraints on the size of code we're taking about..