Mar 21 2024
One of my friends called me yesterday to give him insight about a bug he had in his project. He starts to explain to me, but turns out I didn't understand it either.
He continues to explain it to me and the thing is his explanation changes over time depending on whatever his understanding at that time. Neither of us understand the problem and come up with an agreement to give it a description. Then I asked him instead of calling, just write me a text about the problem you're having and you might find it on your own while trying to explain it to me.
Guess what? he did. Forcing himself to explain the problem in simple words with writing helped him actually understand what the actual problem he had.
Writing is the magic filter for any misunderstanding. It forces you to understand the subject. It draws a line from what you know to what you don't. It helps you to pick the reason why the pieces stick together. If you want to understand something from first principles, write about it. Even it's means explaining the problem. More often explaining the problem gives you the solution.
By the way, when it comes to programming, Debugging is not solving the bug, it's finding the bug. You know this from your experience, finding the incorrect variable is the hardest part and renaming it is the easiest part. Of Course VS Code will find the incorrect variables for you, but you get the idea. So the next time you encounter a problem try to find the root cause and writing is one of the ways to get a deep understanding of the root cause of the problem.
Oh man, It has been 6 months since I wrote this blog, and I forgot what was the problem. But I make my points right?