Troubleshooting and Debugging Skills

They hardly spend any time on this topic in any of the programming courses I took, and in my experience it is one of the biggest determinants of how productive a programmer is. Like it or not, you spend a lot more time int he maintenance phase of your app than the new development phase.

I've worked with soooooo many programmers who debug by randomly changing things with no strategy for finding the problem whatsoever. I've had this conversation dozens of times.

Other Programmer: I think we should try to see if it fixes it.
Me: Okay, assuming that does fix it. What does that tell you about where the source of the problem is?
Other Programmer: I don't know, but we have to try something.

Troubleshooting and Debugging Skills

They hardly spend any time on this topic in any of the programming courses I took, and in my experience it is one of the biggest determinants of how productive a programmer is. Like it or not, you spend a lot more time in the maintenance phase of your app than the new development phase.

I've worked with soooooo many programmers who debug by randomly changing things with no strategy for finding the problem whatsoever. I've had this conversation dozens of times.

Other Programmer: I think we should try to see if it fixes it.
Me: Okay, assuming that does fix it. What does that tell you about where the source of the problem is?
Other Programmer: I don't know, but we have to try something.