Tools of the Trade: A Second Pair of Eyes

As a developer, we often find ourselves working as individuals and we can forget we are a part of a larger community of developers. Our peers can often be just as useful as all of the other tools we may use in our day-to-day development tasks.

Existing Solution

At Rapid Development Group we use Stack Overflow to record problems we have run into in the past. Depending on the nature of your problem it may have already been resolved by someone else in our team. It is also possible that someone else has already solved the problem on their own and reaching out may allow you to resolve the issue much more quickly than just trying to solve it yourself. If you do end up running into a problem that requires assistance, documenting the problem and the eventual solution can go a long way in expanding our knowledge base.

Describing the Problem

When reaching out to a peer, we need to remember to be concise in our description of the problem. There is a saying “teaching is the best way to learn.” I am not sure if I fully agree with that but having to review the problem and break it down into bite size pieces that can be quickly understood by a peer can often lead to new discoveries or thought processes. Even just vocalizing the problem can cause you to process it differently and come up with a potential solution.

Describing Attempted Solutions

The next step after describing the problem is to inform your peer about what you have already done in your attempt to solve it. This will reduce the time having to revisit solutions that you have already determined will not work. It can also help your peer work through your thought process of how you approached the problem and be able to bring in a counterpoint option.

Second Perspective

Ultimately, the biggest benefit to asking a peer for help is having a second perspective. Sometimes we can be too close to the problem to realize a simple solution. Other times we may have just overlooked something minor that is preventing our solution from working, such as a misspelling or syntax error. Having a fresh pair of eyes to look at the problem can often get to the core problem quicker that we could on our own.