Upcoming zine on debugging!
It turns out that 50% of debugging is a mental/emotional struggle – it’s hard sometimes to stay focused and be confident that you can figure out what’s going on.
And if you’re spending all your mental energy on feeling frustrated or dumb for not being to figure it out, you don’t have any left to spend on actually figuring out what the computer is doing! That’s no good.
But debugging doesn’t have to feel that way. Bugs are hard, but they’re almost always tractable. This zine is about 2 things:
- A different mindset you can take towards bugs: one where bugs are a normal part of the process, they’re an opportunity to learn, and where if you take it one step at a time you can almost always figure out what’s going on
- The process I’ve used to to debug many arcane distributed systems bugs. I’ll explain a scientific approach: reproduce the bug, do experiments, ask a lot of questions, track your changes carefully, and help others learn from your research (uh, bug).
Table of Contents:
Here's a preview of the table of contents:
It's still a work in progress, which is why there are some gaps :)
I want this!
This zine hasn't been released yet, but sign up here to get an email when it comes out! (and if you sign up, I'll send you a few more preview pages from the zine as the release gets closer :) )
Commonly asked questions:
Commonly asked questions:
what's a zine?
According to Wikipedia:
A fanzine (blend of fan and magazine or -zine) is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) for the pleasure of others who share their interest.
The zines on this site are usually about 20 pages, and they’re full of short, informative, and fun comics which will quickly teach you something useful.
who are these zines for?
They’re aimed at working programmers, like me! The idea is that you’re busy, you want to know how to use some computer thing, and the man page makes your head hurt.
is the PDF version printable?
Yes! The PDF version of the zine includes special PDFs designed to be easy printable on a home printer. Print it out, staple it, fold it, read it, and then give it to a friend! It turns out it’s way easier to convince your friends to read a physical thing that is in front of them.
They all have black & white version to make sure they print well if you only have a black & white printer.
Take a peek inside:
