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I recently took service of a new provider for web hosting because the last provider was overcharging. I had to develop a small website in PHP. Since I did not want to change the page extension, I used .htaccess file to be able to use PHP code on my html pages. Everything was working fine on my local system. Mr. Zafar was very happy because first time he worked on PHP and everything was spot on. Now was the time to host the website on live server. The complete code was copied on the web server and the URL was accessed. The moment it was typed in the address bar and enter key was hit, boom...error 500
After a lot of code verification and testing, one more try and one more failure. I was in panic and contacted technical support. The support guy made me wait for a good hour and out of frustration I just uploaded a "We will be back" page and disconnected. Next day when I came back and tried to access the site, the home page was shown and there was PHP code smeared all over the page 
I checked the directory and found that .htaccess file was renamed to .htaccess_back. I deleted it and reloaded a new .htaccess file and bang, again error 500. I deleted it and there was my website with crappy looking PHP code all over the page. I took down everything and left again with only "We will be back" page". After this I again contacted the technical support. This is the most important part. Kindly notice the responses of the guy 
You are now chatting with "Support Guy" - General
19:42 Support Guy:
Hello..! Welcome to our Online Live chat helpdesk), May I get your name and contact information in case we get disconnected?
19:42 Zafar Sultan:
(I gave him my contact number)
19:44 Support Guy:
How may i help you ?
19:45 Zafar Sultan:
Why can't I use .htaccess file in my application?
19:46 Support Guy:
What is your domain name?
19:46 Zafar Sultan:
I hosted my website(the domain name) and it was giving error 500
19:46 Support Guy:
please wait
19:47 Zafar Sultan:
Some genius from your support staff renamed .htaccess file to .htaccess_back and the error was gone.
19:47 Zafar Sultan:
But you know what? The whole site became crap. It still is.
19:48 Zafar Sultan:
I recoded some part of it. But without using .htaccess file, I have to re-develop a whole lot bunch of php script.
19:48 Support Guy:
Thanks for waiting
19:50 Zafar Sultan:
And?
19:50 Support Guy:
kindly consult with your developer regarding .htaccess file. It's coding issue.
19:51 Zafar Sultan:
What issue? I am the developer.
19:52 Support Guy:
Please wait.
19:58 Zafar Sultan:
I hope you will be back. Probably with an answer.
20:05 Zafar Sultan:
You want me to wait and meanwhile you will visit the US to look into the server directly?
20:13 Support Guy:
Thanks for waiting.
20:14 Zafar Sultan:
Tell me the reason. I am not here for whole night. What is the problem with your service?
20:16 Support Guy:
We were renamed .htaccess file.
20:16 Zafar Sultan:
Yes.
20:16 Support Guy:
kindly check your .htaccess file
20:16 Zafar Sultan:
For what?
20:18 Support Guy:
As earlier you said your website was not working so we just rename the .htaccess file and your website start working.
20:18 Zafar Sultan:
What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you repeating the same things I have already stated?
20:19 Zafar Sultan:
You renamed .htaccess file and the site started working but the php code didn't so the pages were all crap.
20:20 Zafar Sultan:
And by the way, are you really looking into the issue or you are paid for the time spent online?
20:20 Zafar Sultan:
It's been 40 minutes and you can't bloody find the reason. You are getting on my nerve kid.
20:21 Support Guy:
please wait, we are arrange call you for within 10 minutes
20:21 Zafar Sultan:
So I need to wait another 10 minutes banging my head against this monitor. Right?
20:27 Zafar Sultan:
Genius kid, you wasted 45 minutes of my life. What a disgrace you are for your profession.
After this I disconnected the chat. 10 mins later I received a call from them and the loop started again....
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EIG strikes again?
Although it's not much consolation, this is not really the support guy's fault. He's probably under-qualified and overworked and gets harassed by both the management and clients.
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Yes, the guy will have had 30 mins training on the basic questions that get most frequently asked and has a script to go through. Anything not on his questions he isn't going to know. In these cases you normally need to go through some kind of "escalation" to "second line support". In the OP's case, the most likely answer is that the hosting service simply doesn't support what he wants to do.
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Did you try to turn it off and on again? :p
I never finish anyth
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They don't actually have the PHP module installed/enabled, do they...
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Semi-rant.
Apple's current strategy for new releases
1. Release with bugs and essential features missing
Apple fanboy reaction - None, they are too busy showing off their new gadget and bashing the competition to notice anything amiss.
2. Release update with some bug fixes
Apple fanboy reaction - "Oh look how wonderfully stable xxx is! Apple always ships the best software!"
3. Release update with a fraction of the missing features added
Apple fanboy reaction - "Look everyone, xxx has gotten even better than before!"
(note the use of "gotten")
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ones and zeros wrote: note the use of "gotten"
You wrote that entire post just so you could put that in, didn't you
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harold aptroot wrote: You wrote that entire post just so you could put that in, didn't you
Well he was being kinda hard on them so he had to put a bit of praise in there for their correct use of English.
What?
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You've gotten me all figured out!
I'd give you a list but that would be too much trouble.
There, that should be reason enough.
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The more I comment on, or answer, QA questions here, the more I think that, apparently, having no knowledge of how to debug seems a common feature of posters. Of course, that conclusion could just be an artifact of the fact that a major reason for the use of CP QA is because the posters are:
1. here because they are tolerated here ... in comparison similar questions on StackOverFlow would be quickly closed ?
2. they're not getting any education about how to debug ? no one showed them how to debug ? they just didn't think of it ?
3. for whatever reasons, they never bother to study the wonderful (to those of us who remember coding in the ancient days) tools in Visual Studio for debugging ?
Of course, we could also take the most negative general view: CP QA attracts the lazy, the ignorant, gimme-codez beggars, and the homework-shirking; but, I choose not to take that view, although it's obviously true, to me, that some posters could be described that way.
I think we, "older," programmers (from before ... 1991 ... the time of VB with an IDE) had no choice but to learn how to debug, because: we didn't have CodeProject, StackOverFlow. Although, remembering those early days of VB and the UseNet forum ... and the Microsoft UseNet forum for VB ... where people like the amazing Nicholas Paldino (back then's equivalent of OriginalGriff) seemed to be providing support 24/7, there certainly was some support, and community.
Microsoft did start providing some MSDN content on how to debug about the time of .NET 3.0; for example: [^]. But, I would assert that valuable material on how to debug was available early on ... to those who looked for it.
Well, what to do with/for/to people who do not have a clue about debugging ?
I could fantasize there's a forum on CP that is really an on-line course on debugging that takes the user through a series of coding "challenges," demonstrating/educating-about debugging in Visual Studio. But, I doubt the people that actually needed it would use it. And, I'd estimate the "technical cost" to CP to implement that would be prohibitive.
On the most general level, I wonder if the expectation of many new programmers ... an expectation driven by marketing that portrays programming as "easy" if you just get the latest whatever ? ... is that they simply don't need to know about debugging ? I'd call that: a "weak hypothesis."
When I have students (private, these days), I do focus on debugging from the git-go, and I do throw coding challenges their way specifically to get them to learn how to debug. Is that type of practice "rare" ? I don't know.
Meanwhile, I'll keep trying to maintain this attitude: [^]; and, as necessary, seek sancutary in this weltanschauung: [^]
«Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.» Benjamin Franklin
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Well on one side you are kinda right, on the other you just can't generalize that. I would say it totally depends on their education. Most of them (i guess) are at the starting point or never learned programming.
I'm a 1992 build and i had to learn debugging in console with c++... thank god in VS it's so unbelievable easy
Rules for the FOSW ![ ^]
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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BillWoodruff wrote: Is debugging a lost art ?
I should say so! Personally, I haven't seen a good debugging session since 1990[^]! 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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BillWoodruff wrote: Well, what to do with/for/to people who do not have a clue about debugging
An article describing/demonstrating the basics of debugging and I imagine OG would put in his database as a stock answer where appropriate.
Debugging c# is simple, an article would suffice, I would not like to do the same for browser/asp.net/mvc/javascript/etc... there is a lifetime of wasted effort there!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Hi Mycroft,
There are some articles here on debugging: and I saw one posted this monththat looked promising: [^].
But, this is a "research article" post by a tool vendor that wants me to share my profile details to download a .pdf file to access any content.
And, there are lots of videos on VS/C# debugging: [^].
Perhaps the question is: "how do we lead the horses into the pasture?"
«Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.» Benjamin Franklin
modified 14-Dec-15 2:41am.
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But we do debugging in browser/asp.net/mvc/javascript/etc... How else would be done otherwise. 
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Maybe beside all the series we already have (HTML, MVC and others) CP should open a content for debugging - it will create a article-base that we can feed to the QA...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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I think that debugging is something that is skimmed on when it comes to programming education.
I'm not very good at it myself but I've picked up a few tips and tricks that tends to help me.
I think a lot lies in recognizing errors and utilizing error codes. A missed semicolon or bracket might not generate a error where the error code by itself will help you but you tend to recognize the structure of the error in your ide fairly quickly. This is the most basic of stuff but too common.
I think it should be mandatory when studying programming to early on have a course in debugging to learn how to take advantage of different tools and learn some debugging methods.
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Member 11683251 wrote: I think that debugging is something that is skimmed on when it comes to programming education.
Agreed! When I went through programming classes (98-00) we were never taught how to debug. I got a part-time programming job in my junior year and remember finding out about breakpoints and the magical F8 (now F11) key!
I also remember starting in classic ASP and javascript and having to get creative on the debugging using alerts or response.writing variable values to see what was happening. It's sooo much easier these days!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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We did learn about break points but they are so basic that its almost criminal leaving them out of education. I think learning by doing is fairly important when it comes to debugging, having a small course where you learn about the most common tools and have to solve a few problems via finding bugs in code isn't something that's too difficult. I mean I could prepare several cases in a short order to be used.
Similar with your experience with asp and javascript I did some programming with unity and monodevelop a few years back. We were having trouble getting the IDE's tools to work with Unity and was pressed for time so there was some creative logging and peak functions written to work around that. We also got a lot better at looking at the code more attentively.
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I think a lot of it is that "programming" is becoming a "required course" in some education systems, just as Maths has been for years.
And that means that a heck of a lot of people who have no aptitude - and definitely no interest - in the subject are having to sit through it and then do homework. They are used to courses where thinking isn't an option - memory and Google is enough - so when you get to work which has no right answer but a million different ways to get the right result it throws them. Thinking isn't an easy habit to get into, and the modern world positively encourages you not try it, just "follow the herd" and do what they do, say what they say, like what they like (and of course "buy what they buy").
Debugging isn't just a skill, it's a state of mind - and most of us who came into the industry early already had the right "how does that work?" when we first sat down with a compiler (or a stack of blank cards and a punch machine in my case).
But I have seen a few people there who would appear to be trying to hold down a job purely by asking questions in QA - and everyone knows you should use vWorker for that!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: Debugging isn't just a skill, it's a state of mind
Hi Griff, I like those words !
But, I keep thinking that the situation vis-a-vis debugging knowledge would be equivalent ... for automobiles ... to someone who only uses one forward gear in the gearbox, and tries to go backwards by making a full-circle turn ... then wonders why they get stuck in traffic.
«Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.» Benjamin Franklin
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Griff's right, in that it's a systematic approach to finding the problem.
That's not new or old developer, it's more of "does developer understand the problem, and approach a solution in a logical manner" versus "let's try to hack some stuff together, and see how it goes."
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If you post a question over on the dark side (SO) you get prompted with similar questions / answers before you submit your own, in an effort to determine if a related / similar question has already been posted which may be helpful.
Maybe during the question creation process, we try to eliminate all these sorts of questions before they ever get posted.
Before you post this question.....
1. What have you tried so far?
2. Are any of these related questions helpful to you?
Whilst we don't want to turn CP into the elitist forum that SO has become, we also want developers to be able to help themselves.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare
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Have to admit I want to put my fist through the monitor every time I see a question with "Object reference" in the title. When I click the question and see a 300 line code dump with no indication what line the error is on I want to through it out the window.
As for debugging tutorials, I tend to refer people to this link
Mastering Debugging in Visual Studio 2010 - A Beginner's Guide[^]
As the adage says, give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, ask about null reference exceptions and you annoy the living cr*p out of a lot of devs.
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Being a 1970 model I learnt to debug Cobol code using hexadecimal dumps on reams of paper.
Sounds awful but in practise it was not too bad, it was just a case of being methodical when one went through the 90+ pages of paper.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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