Re:Ask HN: What is your best advice for a junior software de...
by ljm on Wednesday October 03, 2018 @12:28PM
(#18131873)
This is a good insight. Many a time I've offered a fix to a bug and the response was "how did you figure that out?"
My answer was that I looked at the error message and then, if it was available, scanned the backtrace to figure out which files/method calls were involved. Otherwise (particularly with JS), I set up some breakpoints in the browser to help visualise things better.
I've come across plenty of senior developers who ignore what the machine says. The thing is, most bugs aren't solved through intuition, so approaching the problem as if your gut feeling is completely accurate is going to turn a 10 minute debugging session into something that could last a full day. As, in my experience, it once did.
My answer was that I looked at the error message and then, if it was available, scanned the backtrace to figure out which files/method calls were involved. Otherwise (particularly with JS), I set up some breakpoints in the browser to help visualise things better.
I've come across plenty of senior developers who ignore what the machine says. The thing is, most bugs aren't solved through intuition, so approaching the problem as if your gut feeling is completely accurate is going to turn a 10 minute debugging session into something that could last a full day. As, in my experience, it once did.