alt Hacker NewsFor me, it's tracing code/pipelines to figure out how a result was produced, typically in the context of that result being wrong somehow. Go To Definition is the most useful function in any editor.
I'm always surprised by how frequently colleagues don't think to do this and are left helpless.
Replies
cyberax • today at 6:38 AM
Another example: debuggers.
It's amazing that a lot of new developers don't know how to use them at all! I'm not even talking about using the command line gdb, but just the basic "Set Breakpoint" feature and attaching to processes.
This reminds me of my further theory that everyone needs one 'heavy' and one 'light' technique. The 'light' technique is something that often works well as a heuristic and can be an effective unit of iteration. The 'heavy' technique is something that you can fall back on in difficult cases, something that can reliably solve hard problems, even if it's slow.
Sometimes the heavy technique is: just ask someone else. ;)