A curious fact about programming

[hazel]

I've got the programming bug again! Someone on this forum - I think it was Elija - once said that anything so pleasurable and addictive ought to be illegal. But I've noticed something curious:

I'll have a bug and I pore over the code, add printf statements here and there to track my variables, rebuild, rerun, and I still can't find why it's misbehaving. Or I want the program to do something but I can't work out for the life of me how to do it. In the end I just give up in disgust. Then, a few hours later, when I'm walking the dog, or in bed, I suddenly think, "Of course! I just have to do x.." And it seems so obvious. So why can I never see it when I'm sitting in front of my computer?

[bigtomrodney]

Have you ever tried 'Rubber ducky debugging' Hazel?

[Freston]

Sometimes I spend hours on a piece of code, and then I look at it, read it and I have no idea of what it's supposed to be or do... it's just vague lines of random characters and I can't for the life of me see meaning in any of them.

Then I walk away, and within a minute or two it comes back to me and I need to go back *must* go back to read it again.

[hazel]

Have you ever tried 'Rubber ducky debugging' Hazel?

And what the heck is that?

[elija]

Have you ever tried 'Rubber ducky debugging' Hazel?

No. That's what senior developers are for

[elija]

And what the heck is that?

Explaining your logic and code in great detail to a rubber duck.

[Cabhan]

It's true. On many occasions, I have been stuck on something, and when I'm explaining it to a friend, the answer becomes obvious.

Sometimes talking about the problem out loud can really clear things up.

[gerard4143]

My programming answers come to me while I'm trying to falling asleep.