Another effective technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed ``Never mind, I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you.'' This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners.
One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.[
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posted by 88Pro / Thursday, October 27, 2005