Start-ups are buggy!

That eureka moment while building your start-up… might just be a bug.

In the lifecycle of software development, while fixing errors after coding, a developer goes through a cycle of eureka moment when they feel that the solution that flashed into their head is the right solution. 

This is what happens:  

The business logic of the software has been completely implemented as per the requirement specifications, but for some reasons, the software doesn't work as expected. The developer runs the software, supplying input, watching the variable as operations are being performed on it and observing the changes. The ultimate aim of this process is to understand what the program actually does, in comparison to what it’s supposed to do. Depends on what is discovered in this process, the developer has a choice of either doing something very trivial — like adding the missing semi-colon — or something as extreme as re-building the system from ground-up. 

While going through this process, as I mentioned before, a developer goes through a number of eureka moments. For each eureka moment encountered, the developer HAS TO believe it to be the solution to the error. The problem is that the developer almost never knows if it is – or not – until they go through the process described above: input, step through, observe and understand. Then change something; and repeat. This could go on for a couple of minutes, or even a few weeks. 

This process is known as by software developers as debugging. 

Debugging is an art. The art of debugging is honed as a developer gets more experienced and it depends on how the developer attunes themselves to the problem being computerized. An experienced developer knows how to weed false eureka moments out of the process. Also, a developer doesn't automatically become good in debugging just because they can convert a requirements specification to programming codes. Experience is required. It’s non-negotiable. While it takes some developers relatively little time to become master debuggers, it takes some other a lot of repeated failures. They just have to keep at it until they master the art. 

Good thing is that the art is transferable. 

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I believe that this is how building start-ups and successful companies are. The parallels are just very glaring. Debug until it works!