Google it

Please don’t come to me with a question that can be solved by a Google search of the error. In these modern times, Google really should be in your blood by now.

Once you google it, of course, try the things you found on google, take notes, and read the errors for clues.

Stack Overflow

If Google isn’t sufficiently refined, or if your code issue isn’t extremely urgent, consider asking your question on the largest programming bug forum in the solar system… Stack Overflow. Be forewarned: the SO community is not always friendly or well-moderated for snark. That said, you can definitely improve your odds of kind answers by following these tips on asking a question well..

Check your environment

There are a lot of ways that your programming environment can make things fail.

Execute the following commands, and ask yourself whether these values could explain your issues:

• echo $PATH
• echo $PYTHONPATH
• echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
• echo $DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH
• which ‘insert your program here’
• which python
• which gcc

If you don’t know how to interperet these runes, google around to find the meaning of these environment variables. Or, read the first chapter of the book.

Debuggers and Profilers

Try to debug with an interactive debugger or find memory errors with a profiler. There is a section on debugging and profiling in the book.

Minimal Working Example

To get the most out of your Stack Overflow question or your meeting with me, you will need to formulate a Minimal Working Example.

Yes, sometimes a minimal working example is hard to create. If that’s the case, I understand. However, simply the act of creating one is often enough to provide clues about the source of the error. As you proceed, please do what you can to document what you are trying to do, how you got where you are, how you tried to fix it. I will need this information to help you.

Collaborate

You’re probably in the office as you’re doing your research, so you have an excellent resource very nearby! Your colleagues! You might just show them the error you’re dealing with, or share your minimal working example on GitHub.
Either way, try discussing it in person or on Slack with the other students, and maybe they can help.

Contact me

There should be ample opportunities to ask me quick questions about what you can try to solve your bug – try to drop by Coffee Chat or pop by my office if you think it’ll only take a few minutes and my door is open.

If you have tried everything above and nothing has been clarified, and you think it might take a while to debug, then should you email me or Slack message me. If possible, it should point to details somewhere (ideally GitHub or a Gist) about your minimal working example or your detailed documentation of the problem (above). I may need a few days to look it over (so you may as well also add it to Stack Overflow in case they’re faster than me.) If I can’t help you fix it by email, I’ll let you know we should meet. If we need to meet, schedule a meeting.