Imagine you’re debugging, and you’re stuck. I have a technique that’s going to help. Think of an action you might take. Predict what will happen when you take that action. Take the action. Check if you were right or wrong, consider that information, and repeat. ...
Some code is broken, and you can’t figure out why. Maybe there are a lot of changes, and identifying the breaking change seems impossible. Or, maybe you’re curious about how things break in your organization. The tool you need is git-bisect. ...
Screenshots of code are common in developer communication, but they come with real drawbacks. Here’s why I try to avoid them. ...
A stumbling block for many people when debugging is reading the stack trace. Today I’d like to discuss this important skill. ...
I remember the first bug that I shipped to production. I was upset that I’d broken something and was anxious to fix it. But I noticed something curious: the calm demeanor of a senior mentor helping me. They refused to meet my intensity. While the world burned, they wanted to instead discuss the bug and its relative importance. ...
You were stuck, and now you aren’t. Congratulations! Before you move on, it’s vital to stop and learn from it. It’s the best way I know to get better and spare your mind for increasingly harder problems. ...
We’ve all seen this: a frustrated coworker hunched over a computer after hours, flailing alone against some impossible bug. Go home, coworker. Don’t stay stuck. ...
Here’s a trick that that has helped me as a programmer: before doing anything major, like killing a process, stop and count to ten. ...
When I create Agile bug tickets, I leave the story points blank. Why? Two reasons: pointing bugs creates the wrong incentives, and bugs are hard to estimate. ...
Me: Hey, I’m experiencing an issue with your software. Here’s a detailed bug report. SAAS Engineer: What you’re describing isn’t possible. Narrator: But it was possible. This is a frustrating, unproductive snippet of a conversation I’ve had a few times in my career. What can we learn? Treat bug reports like gold. ...