I think I've told this story before, but: my first month at Stripe, a senior eng on my team (thanks Patrick!) noticed me print-debugging, pulled up a chair and said "we are going to spend the next hour getting you comfortable actually using a debugger." Probably the single highest-value hour of my life in terms of net productivity gain. I'm not a huge fan of pairing on a day-to-day basis, but it's hard to argue that sometimes you need two rollie-chairs and a very patient driver to teach you the really high-leverage stuff.
@jmduke Definitely one of the most useful learnings at my first job. A debugger is much much more useful than print(), not just for the code you're writing but for understanding the entire flow
@jmduke this is the the counter-argument to 100% remote that I find the most difficult to refute
@jmduke Wow, thats a great senior! And that seems to be a session remote wouldn't trigger.
@jmduke Agreed. Wish someone would have turned me on to tmux earlier. Similar productivity gain.
@jmduke I think part of it is that for some people these days, it's not as simple as connecting a remote debugger and sticking a breakpoint multiple processes/watchers/microservices running on cloud functions/etc etc
@jmduke I love this and wish it would happen more often. There are plenty of things to get people started in this career, but the value that someone with experience can bring to you in cases like this, is just invaluable.
@jmduke step by step debugging is absolutely a skill one must be "shown" to fully appreciate counterpoint: async code
@jmduke [Insert bell curve meme with print debugging on both sides]
@jmduke I wrote a blog about this as I was surprised too! bytesizego.com/blog/debugging…