Summary of Allison Kaptur - Love your bugs - PyCon 2018

00:00:00 - 00:30:00

Allison Kaptur speaks at PyCon 2018 about the importance of having a growth mindset when it comes to debugging. She discusses how a growth mindset can help programmers embrace struggle and improve their skills. She also recommends reading books by Carol Dweck on the topic.

• 00:00:00 Allison Kaptur discusses why she loves bugs and offers two examples of bugs she's worked on at Dropbox. She warns that bit flips can happen frequently in the real world and can be difficult to diagnose.
• 00:05:00 Allison Kaptur discusses how bugs can be a useful tool for programmers, noting that the best kind of bugs are those that show that a programmer is operating on the edge of their ability. She goes on to discuss ways to take advantage of this opportunity.
• 00:10:00 Allison Kaptur discusses how two bugs in a desktop logging system caused an unexpected increase in server load. The first bug caused the client to send logs starting with the oldest instead of the newest, and the second bug caused the server to 500 when the client tried to upload a corrupted log file. The server was then able to reload the logs from the client, but there were still many clients with corrupted logs.
• 00:15:00 Allison Kaptur discusses the challenges of scaling a logging cluster, and how Chill-Out helped mitigate the issue. She also provides some practical advice for designing desktop and mobile applications.
• 00:20:00 Allison Kaptur discusses the benefits of having a growth mindset, including increased resilience in the face of setbacks, improved mastery of material, and decreased dishonesty. She also discusses the consequences of having a fixed mindset, including decreased effort and decreased mastery.
• 00:25:00 Allison Kaptur speaks on the topic of debugging and growth mindset at PyCon 2018. She discusses how a growth mindset can be used to approach debugging challenges and successes, and how confidence and prior experience are not good predictors of success. She also discusses the research on imposter syndrome and how a growth mindset can help people feel less affected by it.
• 00:30:00 Allison Kaptur discusses the importance of embracing struggle and how it can help programmers grow. She also recommends reading books by Carol Dweck, including Self Theories: How Our Minds Work and Pushing the Limits: What Women Can Do With Confidence, Discipline, and Determination.