Transcript

So I've been calling for longer than I can remember, and I've learned a ton of stuff, most of them the hard way. Here are some technical tips that will hopefully save you hours and hours of debugging someday, and I've saved the best for last. First, don't use iCloud and get in the same directory. If it hasn't caused you problems yet, it will. It's just a matter of time. And when it does happen, it won't be obvious that iCloud is causing the problem. You'll spend hours debugging weird conflict and file corruption issues trying to figure out why the files don't match when the real culprit is iCloud trying to sync or not sync. In files in the git repository in the background. Trust me, it's not worth the headache. Put your git repos in the directory that's excluded from iCloud sync. Here's the next one. If you're developing and suddenly start getting weird build errors that make zero sense, like errors that have nothing to do with the part of the application you're modifying, Check your system's memory and storage. You might have over 50 browser tabs open, docker containers running, 3 Ides and Spotify all fighting for the same resources. Your system is literally capping out. close some of those applications, or even better. Restart your computer. It usually fixes all of those weird errors. Alright, here's an interesting one. When you're debugging complex errors involving multiple systems or situations where things aren't clear cut, your approach should be finding and reading the logs from all the systems involved. I know, revolutionary concept, but seriously, the first step should always be understanding the errors by reading the stack trace and logs so you can come up with potential theories you can test. Notice how I say theories? Because that's the whole point. Debugging is an investigative process. What you're trying to do is chase down potential root causes. Because there may be more than one looking for evidence to support or refute your hypothesis. That's how you approach debugging and distributed systems or any complex architecture. Now, depending on what you find in the nature of your system, your next step should be trying to reproduce the error consistently. If you can reproduce it reliably, you can write tests to prevent it from happening again. That's how you build maintainable and resilient systems. All right, I've saved the best for last. If you've been coding for hours and nothing is working and it generally feels like the code is conspiring against you and the world hates you. Here's what to do. close your computer, walk away, and go do literally anything else. Go touch grass, go get some food, drink some water, take a shower, get some exercise. Literally anything but cold. I know it sounds cliche, but it works. You just need to give your brain a break and reset your perspective. More than half the time when you come back, you will spot the issue immediately or you will have refreshed energy to explore the problem in a different way that leads to a solution. Let me know what other technical tips you have in the comments below. As always, follow my codes from our programming videos like this. And check out umacodes.com for more.