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The best programmers I know

(endler.dev)
628 points kiyanwang | 1 comments | 09 Apr 25 06:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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tsak ◴[09 Apr 25 09:40 UTC] No.43630424[source]▶
> Really Read the Error Message and Try to Understand What’s Written

This is a surprising stumbling block for a lot of developers when they encounter a problem. Most times the solution is hiding in plain sight (albeit at least one level of abstraction lower sometimes) and reading what the error was can help to quickly solve an issue.

Anecdotal evidence: We use `asdf` for managing Python, Go and NodeJS versions for our main project. On a fresh Fedora/Ubuntu install, running `asfd install` fails to compile Python as it is missing a few dependencies that are required for Python's standard library. The output that is provided when the `asdf` command fails is pretty self explanatory IF you care to read it.

replies(1): >>43637016 #
1. moffkalast ◴[09 Apr 25 19:55 UTC] No.43637016[source]▶
Honestly this one's been made a lot easier with LLMs.

Like just today I got a nebulous-ass error trying to compile some old cpp package, threw that into 4o and in a few seconds I get an in-depth analysis back and a one line correction that turned out to fix the entire thing. Literal hours saved lmao.