There’s a dangerous stage in every developer’s career:
When the code works, but you don’t know why.
You change three things.
Restart the server.
Clear the cache.
Run it again.
Suddenly—it works. 🎉
But you haven’t actually fixed the problem.
You’ve only lost the evidence.
The Real Skill Isn’t Fixing Bugs
Good developers don’t just make errors disappear.
They ask:
- What exactly failed?
- Why did it fail?
- What changed?
- What evidence proves the fix?
- Could the same bug happen somewhere else?
This mindset turns debugging from guessing into investigation.
Stop Changing Five Things at Once
Imagine a bug appears in production.
You change the database query, update a dependency, modify the API request, restart the service, and change a configuration value.
The problem disappears.
Now what do you know?
Almost nothing.
You don't know which change fixed it.
Instead:
Change one thing. Test. Observe. Learn.
It may feel slower, but it creates knowledge.
An error message isn't your enemy.
A stack trace isn't noise.
A failed test isn't wasted time.
They are clues.
The better you become at reading those clues, the less you depend on trial and error.
The Best Developers Build Mental Models
A senior developer doesn't necessarily know every solution.
They know how to find the solution.
When something breaks, they build a hypothesis:
“I think the problem is happening because X.”
Then they test it.
If they're wrong, that's useful too.
Now they know where the problem isn't.
One Simple Rule
Before changing your code, ask:
“What do I expect this change to prove?”
If you can't answer that, you're probably guessing.
Debugging isn't about making the error disappear as quickly as possible.
It's about learning why the error existed in the first place.
What’s one debugging habit that made you a better developer?
Sumita
Web Developer