Thoughts: Debugging is Emotional

I paired with team members and realized that debugging is an emotional process - not a logical one.

Why do I think this?

When I was coding myself, I couldn’t see it, because I am too involved with the process, especially if it’s code I wrote.

As I am pairing, I can observe team member’s reactions to their own code. I spend time coaching them through calming down first, then finding solutions to solving the problem.

Why is this the case?

I step back and reflect on my journey as a developer and well, if there’s a bug, that means there’s a mismatch between the model of reality in your head and actual reality.

When these two do not match, there is a high chance one will be emotional - because model is failing and now, you have to find where you have to re-learn that failing part of the model.

This can be frustrating, which is a crazy emotion.

Perhaps this is one of the biggest reasons to ask software engineering candidates to write code as part of the interview process. How will the candidate perform under stress when their code does not match reality? How emotional would they become with this small mismatch?

🤔