Pages

January 31, 2012

the bug is in your code

A novice developer has a hard time identifying errors in their code. When their code doesn't work as they hoped they give a cursory glance to their work and often times despair, saying that there must be a bug in the compiler or in the standard library. As time goes by, the novice developer gains experience learns that they have not been looking carefully at their own work to find the actual problem. There was no compiler or library bug. That assumption had led them to overlook their own mistake and prolonged their development time.

We often have the same attitude about sin in our lives. We see that there is a problem due to strife or dysfunction yet we refuse to look for the problem where it is most likely to be found. We refuse to admit that we are flawed and instead seek to prolong a sense of self-sufficiency by assuming the problem is not our fault. We should seek to change our perspective about ourselves just as we have changed our perspectives about our code. Believing that the bug is in your code is the first step toward fixing it.