- TechParadox.dev
- Posts
- Debugging in Production
Every developer has been there — an alert goes off and suddenly you realize you're about to debug in production. And it's never a small issue. It's always the one that makes you question every life choice you’ve ever made.
Let’s talk about the real skill behind debugging in production: not technical expertise, but emotional resilience. Because the code may break, the logs may lie, but your ability to stay calm while everything burns? That’s what truly makes you a senior engineer.
🔥 Step 1: The Moment You Realize It’s Happening
It always starts the same way - an innocent notification on Slack, a PagerDuty alert or worse, a ‘Hey, is something wrong with the app?’ message from a product manager (I know, last one is quite familiar).
At first, you think: Maybe it’s a small issue. Then you open the logs. They’re either completely empty (because why would logging work when you need it?) or filled with cryptic errors.
🚨 Step 2: The Debugging Survival Guide
Step 1: Identify the blast radius – Is it affecting one user, a whole region, or everything? If it’s everything, take a deep breath. You’re about to earn a very interesting bullet point on your resume.
Step 2: Logs, Metrics, and the Art of Pretending You Knew This Would Happen – Open five dashboards, run three SQL queries, and stare at them as if deep in thought while secretly asking ChatGPT “why is my service down.”
Step 3: The ‘Turn It Off and On’ Ritual – It may be a meme, but it works often enough that you must try it.
If debugging in production was easy,
we’d call it ‘developing’.
🤯 Step 3: Debugging Strategies That Actually Help
Reproduce the Issue in a Safe Environment – Before making any changes, try to recreate the problem in staging or a local setup. This helps isolate the cause without making things worse in production.
Binary Search Debugging – Start eliminating potential causes systematically. Disable features, roll back recent changes, or compare system states before and after the issue.
Leverage Monitoring & Tracing – APM tools, structured logging and distributed tracing can help pinpoint where the failure originates. (Leverage tools like Splunk, Datadog, Grafana)
Check Dependencies & External Systems – Sometimes, the problem isn’t in your code but in an upstream API, a failing database or an expired certificate.
Collaborate & Document Findings – Keeping notes and discussing with teammates can speed up resolution and prevent the same issue from happening again.
🛠️ Step 4: Post-Mortems and “We’ll Fix It in the Next Sprint” Lie
Once the fire is out, it’s time to write the RCA (Root Cause Analysis). This is where you use fancy phrases like “race condition” or “unexpected edge case” to sound like the system, not you, was at fault. But you know, you gotta improve your application and make it robust.
As you document the issue, you start to think about how to make the system more robust. You’ve seen the flaws firsthand, and now is the time to fix them. Maybe the application needs better failure recovery mechanisms. Perhaps you’ll push for better automated tests, particularly for edge cases that always seem to be the ones that cause chaos.
There’s always something to improve and you’re already brainstorming ideas for the next sprint. But then comes the dreaded line: “We’ll fix it in the next sprint.” Will you, really?
Closing Thoughts
Next time you're knee-deep in a production issue, remember this: debugging isn’t just about fixing the problem; it’s about mastering the art of staying cool under pressure.
Until next time, stay calm, keep those logs readable and may your deployments be ever graceful.
Cheers!
Got a wild production debugging story? Share your experience and join the conversation on LinkedIn and 𝕏
And if you find this newsletter useful and you want to contribute to sustain and evolve it, please think to "buy a coffee"
Reply