Recently, someone told me about a bug. I spent a fair amount of time investigating the bug, including quite a while trying to get a test that would reproduce it.
In the end, it turned out malformed input was being used. There was no problem.
It's a classic mistake. I was so focused on solving the problem that I forgot to validate the most important thing about it: whether or not it existed at all.
Generally, I try to adhere to this rule:
Embrace observations and disregard interpretations.
This time, I ignored my rule and I paid an hour of my life as the price.
