Debugging scales when you write down what you ruled out

talk
1

I’ve started to think the habit that actually scales is writing down what you ruled out, not just what you found. Without that, teams keep revisiting the same dead ends because nobody can tell whether something was genuinely tested or just assumed away.

That feels a lot more durable than “being good at debugging,” which is basically impossible to transfer. Do people here actually keep that trail in a useful way, or does it turn into notebook theatre after a while?

2

Writing down “ruled out” only stayed useful for me when we forced it to include the test and the signal, not the vibe: what you changed/observed, and what log/metric proved it.

3

Ruled-out paths only stay useful for me when it includes the “how” in one line, otherwise it’s just “we checked X” and nobody trusts it.

Like “disabled the service worker + hard reloaded, bug still repros” or “swapped to a clean Chrome profile, still happens” — enough that the next person doesn’t burn an hour redoing the same ritual.