Debugging the Sick
My father told me an anecdote about a patient who, while clearly very ill, showed a baffling lack of symptoms. To the first doctor he claimed everything was perfectly normal. To the second, he claimed that he’d noticed no change to his normal daily routine. It wasn’t until a the third doctor to see him asked him to step through a “normal” day that a missing key symptom became apparent: “The alarm goes off at 7.30, I get out of bed, go to the bathroom, throw up…”
This isn’t meant as an argument for using debuggers when coding but rather a warning always to challenge assumptions and to fix problems when they occur. Routine blinds us to everything. This can be a blessing in day-to-day living but it’s a curse when problems cascade and the root cause is obscured by habit.