I’ve found that a big difference between new coders and experienced coders is faith: faith that things are going wrong for a logical and discoverable reason, faith that problems are fixable, faith that there is a way to accomplish the goal. The path from “not working” to “working” might not be obvious, but with patience you can usually find it.
"It's always something." (as opposed to being mystically causeless) is a catch-phrase of mine when assisting new coders. I usually pull it out again after we find the mystery bug to reinforce the memory that mystery bugs are solvable.
In my many years of coding, I can't count the number of times that completely baffling bugs have eventually been traced down to errors that were concrete, understandable and usually embodied in just a tiny amount of erroneous code. My many, many experiences with this outcome gives me the confidence to keep digging even when I have no clue where to look. Without those experiences, what I do every day would seem like an unending stream of hopeless situations. That's why it's important to share that confidence with new coders --to help prevent them from failing due to despair just long enough for them to succeed.
How do you make it out of Comp Sci 101 without that faith? But it is true that the notion can persist that maybe just throwing in one more condition or expression might be the fix, no matter why.
Comments
This is my favourite statement, really hits home.
"It's always something." (as opposed to being mystically causeless) is a catch-phrase of mine when assisting new coders. I usually pull it out again after we find the mystery bug to reinforce the memory that mystery bugs are solvable.
In my many years of coding, I can't count the number of times that completely baffling bugs have eventually been traced down to errors that were concrete, understandable and usually embodied in just a tiny amount of erroneous code. My many, many experiences with this outcome gives me the confidence to keep digging even when I have no clue where to look. Without those experiences, what I do every day would seem like an unending stream of hopeless situations. That's why it's important to share that confidence with new coders --to help prevent them from failing due to despair just long enough for them to succeed.
How do you make it out of Comp Sci 101 without that faith? But it is true that the notion can persist that maybe just throwing in one more condition or expression might be the fix, no matter why.