111–120 of 141 posts
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Thanks for posting an archive link. My site has survived previous HN traffic spikes on Fly.io's free tier, but 256mb of RAM wasn't quite adequate this time :)
No disrespect, but I thought the whole point of these magic cloud platforms was that this situation never happens.
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The code rarely resembles the runtime state of the system. Debuggers are an incredible shortcut almost all the time.
I strongly and emphatically disagree on every point (I don't even know what your statement about runtime state and code even means actually, it just seems like a category error, but how do you even write code without being able to reason about runtime state? It just makes no sense.), but I understand there are people who love their debugger and I respect them. Basically the only time I pop open the debugger is when i…
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I think you may be leaning too far in the other direction. I'm a troubleshooter. I fix problems. I keep my head straight in a crisis. Every job I've had across 3 decades, regardless of my actual title or formal responsibilities, I'm the firefighter. People call me when they can't figure something out. People call me when something big breaks and needs to be fixed urgently. Even if I'm not an expert in the broken thin…
Textbook survivorship bias. > I wouldn't need to help out nearly as many people because they could handle their own crises. They don't need to, because there's always you who can figure out boring minutiae for them while they deliver business value.
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This mentality through most of my career has left me trapped as technical support, and it's damn near impossible to climb out of the pit I've dug for myself. What you say about being seen as a car mechanic is true.
> and it's damn near impossible to climb out of the pit I've dug for myself. By far the easiest way to do so will be to find another job. If you can't do this, yea, mentality will lock you in to positions you don't want to be in.
Fixing things only gets notices by coworkers and good managers.
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> this is why I also promote using a debugger as much as I can as well - there's nothing quite like being able to see _exactly_ what's going on. I don't know, the speed of just reading code and maybe inserting some diagnostic messages is hard to beat. It's a pretty bad day if I feel like I need to bust out a debugger—99% of "seeing _exactly_ what's going on" is not going to be relevant and will just distract you.
The code rarely resembles the runtime state of the system. Debuggers are an incredible shortcut almost all the time.
> Realizing that I spend more time troubleshooting than I do building or doing ... That's not good. The problem with troubleshooting is that it messes up with your reward system. After you fix a hard-to-debug problem, you feel a sense of accomplishment. Which would be ok, but the problem is that this sense of accomplishment is often time higher than it should be. You go home at the end of the day thinking "well, toda…
I think you may be leaning too far in the other direction. I'm a troubleshooter. I fix problems. I keep my head straight in a crisis. Every job I've had across 3 decades, regardless of my actual title or formal responsibilities, I'm the firefighter. People call me when they can't figure something out. People call me when something big breaks and needs to be fixed urgently. Even if I'm not an expert in the broken thin…
Not everyone is cut out to do that. Asking them to look at a puzzle derails their entire day, almost every time instead of just when it’s hard. So even when it’s their puzzle they resist picking it up because it’s a guaranteed bad day.
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> reliable car mechanics don't get paid a lot. Actually, they do. It's the unreliable car mechanics that need to swindle.
Reliable mechanics have high rates and long waits everywhere I've lived. Hell, I've seen some that are so busy that they won't take new customers!
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I think you may be leaning too far in the other direction. I'm a troubleshooter. I fix problems. I keep my head straight in a crisis. Every job I've had across 3 decades, regardless of my actual title or formal responsibilities, I'm the firefighter. People call me when they can't figure something out. People call me when something big breaks and needs to be fixed urgently. Even if I'm not an expert in the broken thin…
> I'm a troubleshooter. I fix problems. I keep my head straight in a crisis. ... People call me when they can't figure something out. ... Even if I'm not an expert in the broken thing, they call me in. They call me because the experts are often floundering ... This describes a sizable portion of my career. It's lucrative, it's gratifying, and it's fun. It's as close as I'm going to get to being a "kick-ass mercenary"…
But she didn’t panic, she cracked open the debugger and went section by section through the code until she finally spotted her typo. Which is exactly the sort of person who won’t crumble every time something doesn’t work exactly the way the documentation says it does. We hired six people, and only renewed two, of which she was one. So as far as I’m concerned, I succeeded in my interview.
Wikiquote cites the book “Cosmos” page 218 as the source of this cool quote. https://lccn.loc.gov/80005286
Troubleshooting is one of my main comparative advantages - I'm better at it than I am at programming and I enjoy it more. It's also a relatively independent skill, not everyone is good at it or likes it. It reminds me of the lateral thinking puzzles I did as a kid where you had to ask questions to uncover whatever the weird situation was. You have to question your assumptions - think about how you might be wrong, som…