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Getting Stuck

Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.

An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors. It's this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation.

-- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)


This is where the real fun begins.

Google

  1. Always, the first thing to do when stuck is ask google.
  2. Google for: error messages, keywords, describing the problem.
  3. Google in 5-6 different ways.
  4. Don't expect exact solutions. Look for posts that explain what is going on, so that you can understand enough to solve your issue.
  5. Stackoverflow results are most useful. Documentation sites next. Github issue discussions third. Finally personal blogs.

Experiment

As you keep learning more from googling, try experimenting on your own as well.

  • Add print messages generously. This is the direct and most useful method.
  • If you're on the browser, open developer tools and setup breakpoints.
  • Try breaking your change into smaller changes and go step by step to see which step is the issue.
  • Keep commits as small as possible. Even single lines. Test before every commit. So, that when you have an error, you have a smaller surface area for the bug to hide.
  • When you are not sure what is happening under the hood, experiment to understand even if there is no bug. That understanding will pay disproportionately in the long run.

Experimenting is the most fun way of learning things.

Get out of the box

  • Switch off for the day and start afresh the next day.
  • Try to explain your problem to a friend. Just going over the problem again help see something you might have missed or come up with new ideas.
  • Write a note on what got you stuck and the approaches you tried.

Ask for help

As a last effort, if you can't find any info through google and your own experiments haven't been insightful, you can ask for help. But, 99.99% of the time, this shouldn't be needed.