Stories about debugging

I have very talented coworkers. I'm not just saying that (I've ended my internship today so there really is no need), I can show you. Here are two examples:

When Neo first came to the company, my manager (also his) asked what he wanted for the first assignment. Without too much thought he answered, 'just give me the toughest bugs'. If you realize how much engineers hate debugging in general, even though bugs were nothing but their uglier babies, you would understand how unusual that was. Actually Neo IS an expert. He used to program embedded system, so playing fire with registers don't scare him; and he's been debugging real time OSes, so exception handling and memory dump can't even make his eyebrows rise. Seeing me using Visual Studio this afternoon, he threw out a comment: " VS is the invention of Microsoft to make programmers even dumber". Then he explained the more efficient way to gain a lot of debugging experiences and learn techniques should be debugging with gdb and hand-generated labels. I am not sure I'm gonna follow that far, but I definitely know whom to look for when I am bugged in the future :)

Filip is a big Worms (the game) fan. He uses that as ringtone for his sms, and that keeps giving me the impression that he is playing that fabulous game behind our manger's back (literally). But acutally he was a very normal engineer compared to Neo. By normal, I mean he dislikes bugs, especially when it was the first thing he got when he came, without volunteering for it. It was tough for him at the beginning, then he managed to find meaning in it and turned much better. So you will wonder what was the trick. The answer would be naming: every bug that goes to him gets a pretty girl's name immediately. So far I think he has two, Cindy and Rachel. He actually explained to me the many benefits of doing that. First, it gives bug a personality, you are no longer staring very hard at a piece of code, you are looking into the (mysterious) eyes of a woman. Second, bugs and girls are both hard to chase, you think you find them here but they are actually hidden somewhere else, or show you a completely new perspective just when you think you 'understand' them. Third, guys never play with the same girl for too long. Filip is finishing up with Cindy now and looking forward to spend more time with Rachel from next week :) What a genius idea, Filip! Let's just wish him luck. For me, I do like the whole naming practice, but handsome boy bugs just don't raise my appetite as much. Maybe I can name them with pet names, you know I never kept my pets for very long, oh well that was some sad stories, which obviously have little to do with this topic. So I'll stop right here.