The Law Of Bug Conservation

The first commit to the universe repo must have been wild. God out here using some divine command-line interface, typing "Let there be light" and the system just responds with "Ok, creating light..." like it's no big deal. No stack overflow questions, no dependency issues, no merge conflicts with other deities. Just pure, clean execution. Meanwhile, the rest of us need three StackOverflow tabs and a YouTube tutorial just to center a div. Seven days to create the world? That's the most unrealistic sprint timeline I've ever heard.

Content My manager on Dec 30: When will you fix these defects? Me: I will fix them next year Manager You think this is funny? Me

The PEAK of software engineering, ladies and gentlemen! When developers get bored, they don't just fix bugs—they create error messages that scream existential crisis! "it broke" is the software equivalent of a teenager shrugging when asked why they didn't do their homework. No stack trace, no error code, no suggestions—just the raw, unfiltered truth that something has catastrophically failed while you were trying to order your Carnival Steak. The developer probably spent 6 hours implementing complex payment processing algorithms but couldn't be bothered to write more than two words when the whole thing imploded. This is what happens when the debugging budget runs out but the coffee supply doesn't!

Content I've interviewed a lot of people over the last year (Java), and my favorite test is to throw a Stack Trace at them and ask them to figure out what the problem is. The answer is actually quite clear, however. Half of them don't know it's called a stack trace. Some don't know what they're looking at (BYE!). Several focus on the wrong section of proprietary code. Some ask to "open a debugger". however the answer is right there in plain english if you just read the method names. Many don't realize the line numbers are RIGHT THERE, and then start focusing on the lines ending with "Compiled Code". Then there are the ones who work their way up from the bottom, starting with the application container code, and lose their minds. Some who figure out what is happening don't have a solution to prevent it from happening. No, I'm not sharing the trace; suffice to say it's been reviewed by more than 5 of my peers and they all passed. Like Reply 1h Edited I mean, it isn't hard to eliminate people with a coding question. Do you find it impossible to teach people how to read text stack traces, or is this a skill without which they will be unable to do anything of use, or do you just not want to hire anyone? 1 am serious. 1 can come up with dozens of useful programming skills I can test a candidate on that most perfectly skilled programmers would fail. Start with eliminating people who can't code at all. Then find out what they can do that could be useful. If I have 5 people who can already take a printed out stack crash dump, I probably don't need another, and if I do, a qualified candidate can be taught that skill by someone who knows it in under a week. Then again, maybe you work for Stack Trace Inc, and your entire job is looking at stack traces. If so, by bad. Like Reply 22m

OH. MY. GOD. The AUDACITY of these system shutdowns! Your laptop and that poor confused emoji are BEGGING to stay alive, but that dictatorial Overwolf app is like "NOPE, not today sweetie!" 💅 Meanwhile, your precious unsaved code is hanging by a thread! That one rebellious gaming overlay that decides YOUR WORK isn't as important as ITS update. The digital equivalent of someone unplugging your life support to charge their phone! And the worst part? NO ONE ASKED THE TERMINAL! That poor, neglected command line never gets a say in anything! TRAGIC!

Content IF DEBUGGING IS THE PROCESS OF REMOVING SOFTWARE BUGS, THEN PROGRAMMING MUST BE THE PROCESS OF PUTTING THEM IN.. - EDSGER DIJKSTRA TechWorm