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Comment by marianov | Hacker News Reader

Wireshark. I've saved countless enterprise problems that nobody could debug by intercepting traffic and guessing, or looking at the raw data nobody knew was there.

Python list comprehensions + ipython: it changed how I approach all compley python code. I iterate over the data until I get it right, then use that as the basis of the program/script.

Youtube: I can learn anything now. It's the real world The Matrix

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Re: YouTube, the internet as a whole has gotten pretty for "How do I X?" queries.

My favorite anecdote was the time I ripped a hole in the side of my house, then googled "How do I frame a rough opening for a window?" ... and that story turned out fine, with my house having a new window at the end of the day, and not a gaping hole with a tarp tied to it.

Interesting use of wireshark.. I'd assume they'd at least allow you access from at least one end.

last time it was: install tcpdump on java server doing nasty things. save pcap. Analyze with Wireshark, find out the JAVA app was doing insane things against the Oracle DB even after vendo said they had "optimized" database access. Th good thing is the same technique applies to REST apis, sockets, load balancer problems, other databases. You probably can do a better job using each specific stack debug facilities, but a .pcap and wireshark is the swiss army of debugging.

Also: strace for reading what anything in Linux is trying to do when failing.

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