

Rubber Ducky Logs - phleet
http://jamie-wong.com/2013/09/29/rubber-ducky-logs/

======
gruseom
I liked debugging more once I realized that the answer always comes as a
surprise. Something you believe about your system must not be true, or else
the fix would be straightforward. So debugging is like a mystery novel:
suddenly seeing what you didn't see before is a pleasure.

~~~
wizzard
I enjoy it when the problem is in my code. I despise it when the bug is in a
third party library or utility. That's usually the last place I look and often
the hardest to fix (or have fixed).

And sometimes you find a limitation that can't be overcome and you have to
think of a totally new way to do everything. For instance, some API
documentation says you can get X but the documentation is outdated and half
the data is missing. Back to square one.

Just typing this out is raising my hackles.

------
peterhajas
> I hate debugging. Anyone that’s worked at a desk near mine has likely
> witnessed my debugging cycle of rage, insight, disbelief, and existential
> despair.

I _love_ debugging. Debugging is such a fun thing to do - inspect the problem,
dissect the architecture, test your assumptions.

~~~
dllthomas
Watching House can help.

~~~
aninhumer
Except that House's process is basically equivalent to making a vague guess of
the problem and then quickly hacking it into production and waiting to see if
anything else breaks.

~~~
dllthomas
_Watching_ House helps make debugging less frustrating/painful. I didn't say
that _following House 's example_ makes debugging happen any better.
Occasionally, taking a page from differential diagnosis is probably a good
idea, but obviously do whatever makes sense to your situation when it comes to
deployment practices.

------
cgore
What he is describing is basically an engineering notebook. I prefer paper,
even for software, it just seems more natural to me. Plus I can easily add
sketches and diagrams then.

[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Engineering_Introductio...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Engineering_Introduction/Notebooks)

~~~
greenyoda
I used to keep my design/debugging notes on paper too, but the ability to use
"grep" on years worth of notes convinced me to switch to plain-text files. (I
still use paper for sketches and diagrams, since I haven't found any software
that's anywhere near as good as paper for drawing.)

~~~
dllthomas
I've been contemplating seeing how well OCR can handle my handwriting. Fill a
notebook, cut the spine off, feed it through a scanner and start a new
notebook. That way I get diagrams, and the feel of writing on paper, but I can
also grep.

