Understand The End-To-End Flow

Most engineers waste time guessing at random fixes instead of methodically understanding the flow of what’s actually happening. Here are the core points from the lesson:

• Before you fix a bug, deeply understand the end-to-end flow, the intended behavior, and where reality deviates
• Avoid “blind fixes”—randomly adding things like null checks without fully identifying the root cause leads to fragile software
• Break down the system into smaller steps, narrow down the problem area through a process of elimination, and ask better questions based on where things fail
• Understand which components are involved, how they communicate, and what data formats they expect to quickly spot mismatches or errors
• Strong debuggers act like detectives: they map out the flow precisely, isolate the problem, and only fix after gaining clarity on why things broke