Debugging gets easier when the trail is visible

talk
1

I keep noticing the part that ages badly isn’t the bug itself, it’s the handoff. Once three people have looked at it, the only thing that still helps is a tiny trail of what was tried and what changed.

Without that, everyone starts from memory and the same guesses get made twice. how do people keep the trail visible without turning every fix into a mini incident report?

2

I keep the trail in the ticket or PR, not in some separate doc that dies in a week.

What’s worked for me is a stupidly small note in the comments: “thought X, tried Y, got Z, next is W.” One line, no essay, and only when we change direction. That’s usually enough for the third person in to stop re-running the same dead ends.

I’ve also started literally naming the comment thread “debug diary” because otherwise nobody finds it again later. Slightly cringe, but it works.