---
title: Ask Only (?) 12 Questions to Fix An Issue
date: '2017-11-21'
slug: 12-questions
---

Earlier today I received a [rather weird bug report](https://github.com/rstudio/blogdown/issues/232) in the **blogdown** repo. I had no idea how `file.rename()` could possibly fail, and I had never received a similar report before.

Usually it is hard to fix an issue without being able to reproduce it. For this one, I _only_ asked 12 questions before I was able to provide a fix. Below is a comparison between how programmers fix bugs or write code in movies (typing like crazy), and how they do so in reality (stare at the screen for hours without hitting a single key, cannot believe what happened, and then start doubting the meaning of life).

![Programmers: in reality vs in movies.](https://slides.yihui.org/gif/programming-movie-actual.gif)
