3 debugging techniques your competition doesn’t want you to know

1.

Problem: You are writing your code in English.

How often have you spent hours debugging just to find that you spelled “source”, “source”?

The English language is notoriously problematic. Spoken English has taken over the world due to its wide adaption and easy learning curve (take than Japanese, you punk!), but written English is a collection of random letters that give you very little in the way of clues to what words are intended. There are spelling competitions for English for gods’s sake! The language is so hard that there are competitions in how to spell it! How does that no cause widespread embarrassment and an overhaul of the language?

English is internet explorer and it’s keeping us all away from our higher selves.

Solution: Vietnamese.

Just write all your code in Vietnamese. Using Vietnamese as your coding language will ensure that your code is readable and spelling mistakes are avoided. If you don’t like the look of Vietnamese or you don’t have the time to learn it the Finnish is a good alternative. Linus Torvald the inventor of Linux speaks Finnish, so there is that, but Vietnamese has a larger userbase already.

2.
Problem: “it’s me, not you”. You are writing your own code.

You have been lead to believe that if you are to have a future in coding, you need to write your own code. The symptom of the problem shows itself when you compile your written code and it won’t run. Error message, on error message.

The problem is not the code itself, but that when writing the code, you did it and you are bad at coding. Everyone knows so, it’s just a fact. That you thought it would just work out is super cringe. You weren’t bullied in school, your classmates were just observant.

Solution: There is so much code out there written by someone else! Just head over to your favorite Git repository and look at all the code, but don’t touch it because you will ruin it. An alternative is also to hire someone else to code for you (that isn’t here to waste everyone’s time of course). This way the code will get written but it will actually run as intended.

3.
Problem: Hours of coding and nothing to show for.

You canceled all your plans this weekend to have two uninterrupted days of coding, but Monday comes around and you have nothing to show for it.

The most common reason for this is that you did not plug your keyboard into the computing unit.

Speaking into a USB socket will not result in input, neither will writing directly onto the screen with a sharpy. A modern computer will need you to use a “keyboard” to enter input with the tips of your fingers.

Solution:  If you already have a keyboard it is time to plug it into the Universal Serial Bus and start practicing typing.  If you do not have a keyboard, you might want to ask your mother if she could give you some of your birthday money earlier so you can buy one.

There you go, 3 debugging techniques that are sure to Improve code!

Bonus tip:  Framing something as a bug sounds lame. Try to reframe it. When someone is asking you what you do, simply answer: “I am haunted by past failings”, then stare out a window until the person leaves.