Re:Resisting Cognitive Surrender
by tdrz on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @08:34AM
(#50351800)
Some things that resonated with me:
> It’s also very valuable to dive into actual execution with a debugger (or have an agent manipulate the debugger on your behalf) till you get a deep sense of how things are flowing through the program, with the confidence that this is the real execution path.
This is essential for me, yet I worked with quite a few engineers that were never using a debugger and just console.log()/printf() their way out of an issue.
We need a way to balance speed with understanding!
> When I have expertise and the overall design direction I can generally simplify the output significantly, controlling for complexity. When I don’t they seem to be the smartest engineers in existence – far beyond the more squishy, organic variety – and all I can do is follow in awe.
This! And if we didn't have to rush the next PR out of the door, it would be very good to understand how that new thing works, thus increasing our experience.
> It’s also very valuable to dive into actual execution with a debugger (or have an agent manipulate the debugger on your behalf) till you get a deep sense of how things are flowing through the program, with the confidence that this is the real execution path.
This is essential for me, yet I worked with quite a few engineers that were never using a debugger and just console.log()/printf() their way out of an issue.
We need a way to balance speed with understanding!
> When I have expertise and the overall design direction I can generally simplify the output significantly, controlling for complexity. When I don’t they seem to be the smartest engineers in existence – far beyond the more squishy, organic variety – and all I can do is follow in awe.
This! And if we didn't have to rush the next PR out of the door, it would be very good to understand how that new thing works, thus increasing our experience.