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Just realized a mentor's offhand comment changed my whole approach
Last spring, a senior dev at my company told me 'you're overthinking the syntax, focus on the data flow' after I spent 3 hours debugging a stupid loop. I almost brushed it off, but it stuck in my head and now I sketch out data paths before writing any code. Has anyone else had a single sentence from a coworker shift how they work?
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the_laura14d ago
Wait, hold on - you sketched out data paths BEFORE writing code? That's actually WILD to me. I've been coding for years and I still just dive in and start typing like a maniac, fixing broken stuff as I go. Three hours debugging a stupid loop sounds like a normal Tuesday for me honestly. Maybe I need to try this whole sketching thing, because my current method is basically chaos and prayer.
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Hold up, the_laura - dive in and start typing like a maniac is basically what I used to do too, no judgment here. But the thing is, the mentor didn't say to sketch everything out perfectly. He said focus on the data flow, which for me means just figuring out where the data comes from, where it goes, and what it looks like at each step. That's way simpler than a full diagram or trying to plan every line of code. It's more like a 5 minute brain dump on a napkin, not a big project plan. And corap61's right, cutting debugging time in half is real, but only because you catch dumb mistakes before they turn into three hour loops.
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