I struggled for two weeks, and finally popped the question (No no no, not the billion dollar question of the lifetime aka "Will-You-Marry-Me"). In fact, the person whom I asked the question was my boss.
A VB program kept giving an error message and I tried to debug it myself. After several days of looking at the code, recreating the jars, reconfiguring some properties files, the error persisted. I tried the old jars, the new jars, none worked. And the test beds were not available for testing. It error never occur before, why suddenly so?
I was afraid to be deemed incompetent if I asked my boss. I wanted to try all possible means to debug. Afterall, often we leave out the lil' details and make silly mistakes. Even tho' I continued with other work, this problem hanged in my mind. It'll not be long before it comes back to haunt me, eg. being tasked to investigate by further looking into the code without any clue where exactly to look or what to look for.
Then I was pushed to the edge. I was tasked to do some tests that involved the program. After a lil' more fiddling, I decided that I should just ask my boss to look at the problem. Within seconds, he deduced that it was a machine dependent problem - nothing to do with the codes. Problem solved. Apparently all the machines I tested were not configured properly since they were non-standard test bed machines, so their environment settings were wrong. The file path of one file was changed (Yeah, only one). And since that file was missing, the program gave me the boo-boo error message which did not tell me much. I did not know such a configuration file existed, not to mention that there was such a specify file path.
The asking was not so bad afterall. Sometimes, all I have to do is to ask. More often, I am the only one who will judge myself. I should not see it as being incompetent but as a learning experience. Tho' I think it is still good to try on my own before seeking any help.
Finally, a lil' burden my back. =)
A VB program kept giving an error message and I tried to debug it myself. After several days of looking at the code, recreating the jars, reconfiguring some properties files, the error persisted. I tried the old jars, the new jars, none worked. And the test beds were not available for testing. It error never occur before, why suddenly so?
I was afraid to be deemed incompetent if I asked my boss. I wanted to try all possible means to debug. Afterall, often we leave out the lil' details and make silly mistakes. Even tho' I continued with other work, this problem hanged in my mind. It'll not be long before it comes back to haunt me, eg. being tasked to investigate by further looking into the code without any clue where exactly to look or what to look for.
Then I was pushed to the edge. I was tasked to do some tests that involved the program. After a lil' more fiddling, I decided that I should just ask my boss to look at the problem. Within seconds, he deduced that it was a machine dependent problem - nothing to do with the codes. Problem solved. Apparently all the machines I tested were not configured properly since they were non-standard test bed machines, so their environment settings were wrong. The file path of one file was changed (Yeah, only one). And since that file was missing, the program gave me the boo-boo error message which did not tell me much. I did not know such a configuration file existed, not to mention that there was such a specify file path.
The asking was not so bad afterall. Sometimes, all I have to do is to ask. More often, I am the only one who will judge myself. I should not see it as being incompetent but as a learning experience. Tho' I think it is still good to try on my own before seeking any help.
Finally, a lil' burden my back. =)
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