Dr. Collederas

How Not to Solve a Problem

The Debugging Spiral of Despair #

Picture this: You're debugging a complex piece of code that’s been trouble for hours. Your screen is filled with half-attempted fixes, each more desperate than the last. You've stopped thinking and started clicking—trying random solutions, hoping something will magically work. Sound familiar?

A Personal Wake-Up Call #

In a recent post, I explained how to debug a packaged Unreal build to investigate a peculiar crash — one with an opaque stack trace that gave little away. Before that, I was deleting areas of my map piece by piece, trying to isolate what I thought was a corrupted asset. Delete, package, test. Fail. Repeat. Mindlessly. All because I didn’t know better and didn’t want to figure out a smarter approach. Hours later, with a mess of half-deleted maps and no progress, it hit me: I was brute-forcing it.

The Psychological Trap of Unproductive Problem-Solving #

I fall into this more often than I’d like to admit. When faced with a tough problem, it feels productive to keep at it relentlessly — like I’m working hard. But I’m just spinning my wheels. I’d guess I’m not alone. It’s tempting to avoid "wasting time" thinking and instead click away stubbornly, even when it’s getting me nowhere.

A Better Approach: Thinking with Purpose #

The solution is to step back and think with purpose. Rubber ducking, anyone? At any point, you should be able to describe your problem and how your next step aims to fix it: What’s the issue? What’ve I tried? Why didn’t it work? What’s my plan now? In my case, I realized I needed more information. So I learned to breakpoint engine code in a packaged game crash. As the post shows, that led me to an old project setting I fixed in seconds.

The Power of Stepping Back #

Time is our most valuable resource—for clients, for ourselves, for our sanity. Once I stopped flailing and started thinking, I not only fixed a very nasty bug but also spared myself many more hours of frustration. A deliberate pause can outpace endless grinding.

I don’t know how common this is, but I’m willing to bet I’m not alone. Save yourself. Take a breath. Think. Act with purpose. Your time’s worth it.