On Cultivating Debugging Sense

The best engineers I have worked with do not treat debugging as a contest. They treat it as a field study. They build a hypothesis, design an observation, and let the system tell the next story.

Listen before you fix

When a service alarms, resist the urge to restart it. Instead:

1. Capture the failing requests.
2. Instrument the path that surprises you.
3. Reduce the system to the smallest reproduction.

curl -w "@curl-format.txt" -o /dev/null -s \\
  -H "X-Debug-Trace: 1" \\
  "https://insidecode.dev/api/ledger?account=core"

Debugging flows from contrast. Compare healthy traffic with broken traffic. Compare yesterday’s metrics with today’s. Differences point at decisions.

Write your learnings down

Each debugging session is a rehearsal for the next one. Capture:

• The symptom (what changed?)
• The narrative (what did you believe, what did the system reveal?)
• The change (how do you make this class of failure easier to detect next time?)

Debugging sense is a muscle. Train it with patience, and you will trust your instincts more than your tools.