Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Mama! Help me! (dev)

What do you do when you're looking at one of your "bugs" (for ex. in your APEX application) and you just don't see it?

Some people do:

But you can also do:
  • go for a walk and come back with a "fresh" head and have another look
  • use Firefox and Firebug to track things down
  • write down what's happening and is going wrong, you would be surprised to see you didn't see the "obvious"
  • start talking about it to yourself or to another
  • ask somebody else to have a quick glance at your code
  • post a thread in the forum
  • debug, trace, ...
I also sometimes think "this can't be true", what am I doing wrong? But then I think it's technology and you'll always find a way to get it working, it's just a matter of time...

We don't have that much time, as we all have tight deadlines, but some of the above points will help you to find the solution faster. And learn from it, put it into best practices so you don't make that mistake again.

YOU CAN DO IT! IT'S JUST A MATTER OF TIME! AND IT'S FUN!

5 comments:

Patrick said...

bing-o! go for a walk and come back...

Anonymous said...

Also..."make coffee"

That one always seems to work for me ;)

Carl Backstrom said...

I found a problem solving flowchart awhile back that has solved almost every programing problem I've ever had.

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=21781

(couple colorful words there)

Carl

Dimitri Gielis said...

That's a nice one Carl!

Thanks,
Dimitri

If somebody else has any others, feel free to add them ;-)

Patrick said...

Carl...great FLOWCHART..prefect!