Scientists keep logbooks for their findings. Why donât computer scientists?
A great place to start doing this is for debugging. Debugging sucks enough as is, make it easier on yourself. A logbook willâŠ
đș Enumerate where you are in the bug fix journey.
Youâll forget this journey when you pick it up tomorrow, write it down.
đł Keep you rooted to the ground. (Creating an âissue stackâ.)
Related to above, it often feels like youâre completely lost in the aether when youâre 50 opened browser tabs deep into an issue thatâs not even the same issue anymore, its a sub issue of a sub issue. Youâre in a stack of issues. But, if you have each issue written down, as you solve one, you can pop it off the stack and solve the next issue one at a time. Keeping this stack in your head sucks, and its easy to conflate understandings from this current problem with the previous problem.
đ Make your future steps clearer.
With all your past attempts laid out in front of you, you will achieve Zen đ§ââïž With Zen, you can either find inner peace to decide you neednât solve the bug, or youâll know what to do next.
đ Document the time and effort spent.
This is incredibly useful when showing your team what youâve done (especially as bug fixing can feel very unproductive). This can also be the content of the issue you create on github.
đ» Document your eventual success and how it happened.
Highly underrated đ„
Also, your writing career?
Cliff Stoll kept one which enabled him to find his hacker and retell the journey in his infamous: The Cuckooâs Egg. So, keep a logbook for your future Pulitzer.