Debugging yourself

Debugging is quite a common task in programming. You code something, and it does not work as expected. You coded it, so you know what the expected behavior should look like. It gives you an error message as well, with some information about the error. You read the error, try to make some meaning of it, search it on Google, look at Stack Overflow, read the docs, and ask your dev friends or a random developer online for help. And that’s how you usually find a solution.

Debugging humans on the other hand is different. Mechanical errors are quite easy to debug, something physically is not working in your body, a part of your body aches, you probably know what is causing the issue, and it is usually easier to debug.

But when we talk about mental well-being, it’s a different story. You feel pain somewhere in your body for some reason. You don’t know if it’s your heart or brain that hurts. Furthermore, you don’t know if the reason for the hurt is you or someone else. Not only that, but you don’t have an exact reference point to compare to when it was not hurting.

The pain is not physical and hence not visible. You cannot replicate the issue, so you cannot ask someone else to debug it for you. But the error is still there, causing the issue.

The only information you have is that something is wrong, somewhere. And that is not a fun problem to deal with.