Debugging Tip

Meet Jack my debugging pal. Jack and his mini-twin sit on my desk at home and at work respectively. What my coworkers do not know is that Jack actually serves a purpose. He is not there to entertain guests that come into my cube area. Though he does that quite well. Ask him about being cautioned taped to a power mac as entertainment to one of the nefarious network admins.

Jack is actually there so that I can explain my problems to him. When I was in college I had a TA that told us this story. While he was an undergraduate his TA would not help with with a problem unless they had already went up to a teddy bear and explained their problem. This caused the students to be self reliant. It forced them to to explain the what their code was doing line by line out loud. Instead of raising their hand at the first sign of trouble.

These TAs were very smart in that they were as the story goes teaching the students to fish instead of simply giving them fish. That they may never be hungry.