Very occasionally, despite all testing efforts, I get hit with a bug report from a customer that I simply can't reproduce in the office.
(Apologies to Jeff for the 'borrowing' of the badge)
I have a few "tools" that I can use to try and locate and fix these, but it always feels a bit like I'm knife-and-forking it:-
- Asking for more and more context from the customer: (systeminfo)
- Log files from our application
- Ad-hoc tests with the customer to attempt to change the behaviour
- Providing customer with a new build with additional diagnostics
- Thinking about the problem in the bath…
- Site visit (assuming customer is somewhere warm and sunny)
Are there set procedures, or other techniques than anyone uses to resolve problems like this?
Best Answer
One of the attributes of good debuggers, I think is that they always have a lot of weapons in their toolkit. They never seem to get "stuck" for too long and there is always something else for them to try. Some of the things I've been known to do:
Eventually, I find the bug just gives up out of some kind of awe at my persistence. Or the client realises that it's probably a machine or client side install or configuration issue.