How do you plug a hole in the drain without causing a leak else where?

Well after learning it the hard way that any quick fix is just that, a quick fix. What's wonderful about quick fix is it's really effective in dealing with short term stress and headache.

But what will probably kill you later and in a slow and painful not to mention gruesome death is how all these problems that you've so smartly manage to resolve with your quick fix will accumulate with interests that when it finally rear it's ugly head again you would have wish and pray that you have taken the proper time and attention in dealing with it when it's was small and harmless.

Kind of like a rodent problem, one mice, it can't be that bad right? After a while, one rat becomes a pack of rat, then before you know it, you're living in your own personal disneyland minus the castle nor the fun. So what am i basically ranting about is that it's definitely worth the time and by golly it should be make a mandatory rule for all programmers to understand their bugs thoroughly before they even begin to think of how to solve it.

Of course if you're lucky enough to have your own unit testing framework with all the test nicely tied with ribbons and colorful wrapping paper at your disposal then at least you can be that much assured that whatever your idiotic lazy mind can whack up some hacked codes together to resolve the bug, you know you're not breaking some holes somewhere with your quick hack.

But even then it won't kill you to properly understand your craft as you might have to deal with this product again in the near future. Quick fix is bad, like sanjaya bad, beneath all that crazy hair and good looks, all you have is a squeky door making all sort of weird noises.

In short an old and mean looking application is sort of like a complex ecosystem, with everything it needs to sustain itself. You remove a mosquito or two thinking hey who doesn't want to live in a life without all the unnecessary bug bites and aedes and what not. Then suddenly you have a gradual increase in a particular type of predator, slowly wiping out other species. But as it's gradual, you're like the frog in the boiling pot, not quick enough to realize that the slowly rising temperature isn't just from that six pack of beer that you just had, but it's going to kill you slowly and without you knowing it.

So next time that you have a bug in your hand, put own your thinking cap and bite a pen to pretend that it's a smoking pike and be your own sherlock holmes. Take your time, look at all the details, strategize and finally catch the culprit red handed. It will definitely be more worthwhile than be like a copper and catch whatever shmuck that is just dumb enough to be nearby the crime scene to get arrested.