Bugs & Boomerangs

I shared a patch to fix a bug and it fixed two.

Happy me 😄

But after a few weeks, the second bug reappeared.

Sad me 😦

What went wrong?

I made the wrong behavior go away, but I didn’t really fix the bug.

It’s easy to patch things up quickly, like adding a sleep to "fix" a race condition. But, in order to really fix them, you need to understand why, when and how they happen.

However, when the release deadline is two hot dogs away, that’s not always possible nor feasible, though. And you end up fixing the shaky table with a piece of folded-up paper under one leg.

Here’s the choice we face:

Stop the leak now to buy time for a proper fix later, or dig in and fix the pipe right away.

Both choices have their own place.

What matters is knowing there’s no “supernatural fix” that makes bugs disappear with a snap, like Thanos.

You have to consciously decide when to pick which one.

Originally shared on LinkedIn