The Best Debugging Tool Rarely Used

Unlike all my other articles, this article was released at 9:30 PM ET. 9:30 PM is right around when I’m wrestling with a tough bug at work and need to make a crucial decision — do I continue investigating or pack it in and continue in the morning?

Too often we decide to power through and continue investigating although more often than not it’s more efficient to put the work aside until tomorrow and walk away. Something interesting about our work as software engineers is that time away from the problem tends to solve the problem.

This is a phenomenon I’ve experienced repeatedly — to the point where I can now realize when I’ve exhausted most debugging options and will now actively choose to step away. Stepping away is a powerful debugging tool that isn’t utilized often enough.

While sleep can help, many other things can aid your debugging like walks or working out. This is one of the reasons that I schedule my daily workout right after lunchtime. This break allows me to step away from my work and any difficult problems I’m chewing on. It’s a good reminder for me to take a break, walk away, and come back with a fresh perspective, a clear mind, and better ideas on how to proceed.

I once had a professor in college who would remind us that: “sleep is the best way to debug”. While I believe it’s not specific to sleep, but more just the notion of a break, it took me too long to internalize this — therefore enduring many headaches, countless hours of frustration, and admittedly sometimes less sleep.

Just last week I was again reminded of the power of a break:

Remember, breaks lead to breakthroughs.

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