Debugging: Techniques for Uncertain Times - Chelsea Troy

When we learn to code, we focus on writing features while we understand what the code is doing. When we debug, we don’t understand what our code is doing. The less we understand, the less likely it is that our usual programming mindset—the one we use for feature development—can solve the problem.

It turns out, the skills that make us calmer, more effective debuggers also equip us to deal with rapid, substantial changes to our lives.

Whether you’re uncertain about what’s going on in your code, your life, or both, in this talk you’ll learn debugging techniques to get you moving forward safely.

[marioraulperez]

I can't explain it with better words, you explain something that I know by experience, but was unable to exteriorize to colleagues.

Sometimes debugging get's Brute-forced, trial and error; and that overwhelms us.

I usually work with legated code, but also in my own code with edge cases; in that moments, as you said, we should switch into investigate mode,

Or "exploratory" tasks; Like we need to learn all code working and system from scratch.

Thanks for your time exposing it.

[marioraulperez]

There is something we used in some decades ago, "asserts" with pre post and middle conditions should be meet.

I never see enough use of "assertions" in "modern" codebases.

While asserts in code are not fully test, they could also help to understand code and what is expected to be in that point of the code, it's a good source of documentation and communication.

it's like logging, but more informative because guide code learner into checks in the code, and could also prevent future misconceptions; those assumptions and checks could be "coded" to ease maintenance.