Member-only story
How to Overcome Tough Bugs Without Pulling Your Hair Out
8 tips for breaking through roadblocks as a programmer
Programming is hard. The ability to translate an idea into code isn’t something that comes naturally to most people, and sometimes we get stuck.
Even after coding for years, you will still hit roadblocks regularly. Computer programming is an incredibly deep field, and it just isn’t possible to master everything about it.
Plus, we all have bad days sometimes.
Maybe you can’t fix a stubborn JavaScript error, or you can’t explain why your website looks completely broken in Internet Explorer, or maybe you can’t even start your development server.
Software can break in an almost unlimited number of ways, and it often does. Murphy’s law.
Setbacks in coding can’t be avoided, but they can be handled gracefully. Here are eight tips that will help you debug your code as painlessly as possible:
- Take care of yourself first.
- Use the tools that are available to you.
- Speed up your debugging cycle.
- Ask for help.
- Look at the obvious stuff first.
- Read your error messages.