Debugging is of course a major part of programming. Arguably most of the time it’s not the most satisfying part of the job, it’s an unfortunate necessity rather than the goal itself. Moreover, I think that most of the bugs I make aren’t interesting (e.g. typos, wrong usage of a library function, nullptr dereferences, off-by-one errors etc.). But sometimes, on rare occasions, one can stumble upon a subtle and sophisticated bug. Resolving such a bug brings true catharsis, gives massive satisfaction and is the ultimate learning experience.
I want to share a story about a man who was staring at the screen with no clue of what was happening, but finished with the great joy of resolving a problem that improved my engineering skills and opened a new dimension of thinking about multithreaded programs. Okay, I know, I got a little bit carried away and perhaps exaggerated. However, I hope that you will feel at least a little impressed by the end of the article.
