Today, in a handful of lines of pretty much copied and pasted code, I solved a bug that’s been plaguing a client site for months - if not years. I guess that’s disingenuous though. Although the fix was quick, the research and experimentation that went into understanding the bug, probing possible causes, getting to know the underlying systems, exploring risk, and finally implementing and testing were significant, and that’s something that’s all to easy to forget.
Now, after a brief wave of elation, I’m feeling like a fraud - which is why I’m writing this. This is a quick reminder that, like the famous Picasso napkin sketch (or Whistler painting), the fix wasn’t hard work, everything that lead up to it was.