Dev Tool Bugs, Assumptions, and a Tiny Bit of Advice

[Mark Wieder]

Dan-

Tuesday, June 21, 2005, 11:21:40 AM, you wrote:

DS> Years of stress and far too many gray hairs led me to this bit of
DS> advice I shared last weekend at RevCon West during my opening  
DS> keynote. I have a hard-and-fast rule NEVER to wrestle with a bug by
DS> myself for longer than one hour. If I can't fix it in an hour, I get
DS> help...from this list, from another programmer, or even by asking my
DS> wife to sit patiently while I go over my code line by line  
DS> (incomprehensible jibberish to her), during the course of which it is
DS> amazing how many things suddenly crystallize.

DS> I was gratified and amazed at how many experienced programmers sought
DS> me out to thank me for that insight at the show, so I figured it  
DS> would be worth sharing here.

I forgot to thank you for this during the conference, so I want to
remedy that publicly here:

Listen, world: Dan Shafer is a Wise Man (or, as he described us at the
conference, "mostly a bunch of fat old white men"). Several of us have
been talking about this advice never to spend more than an hour
beating our heads against the wall before seeking advice from this
list or elsewhere, and it's advice that I intend to take to heart. I
can't count the number of times I would have been better off begging
the list for help instead of running around in circles.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net