Alright, so I’ve been hearing whispers about this John Furtado guy for a while now. Not like he’s famous or anything, but in certain circles, you know, the ones where folks get really deep into specific problem-solving techniques, his name kept popping up. People were saying his approach to tackling really stubborn issues was something else. Sounded a bit like snake oil to me at first, if I’m being honest.
But then, a few weeks back, I hit a wall. A real nasty one. We had this ancient system, a relic from a bygone era, and it started acting up in ways that made no sense. Nobody wanted to touch it, naturally. And I thought, well, what have I got to lose? Let’s see what this Furtado method is allabout.
My Dive into Furtado’s World
So, I started digging. Turns out, there’s no fancy manual or anything. It’s more like a collection of ideas scattered across old forum posts and some obscure notes someone shared. The first thing that struck me was how counter-intuitive some of it seemed. Seriously, it went against a lot of my ingrained habits.
I remember the first step I tried to apply. Furtado apparently preached about understanding the ‘edges’ of a problem before even looking at the core. So, instead of jumping straight into the code, which is my usual go-to, I forced myself to sit back. I spent a whole day, no joke, just listing out every single thing that was not happening as expected. And also, crucially, everything that was still working fine around the problematic area. It felt tedious, like I wasn’t making any real progress.
Then came the part about ‘external dependencies’. Furtado seemed obsessed with them. His idea was that most complex problems are rarely isolated. So, I started mapping out everything that fed into this broken module and everything it fed out to. We’re talking database connections, other services, even scheduled tasks that I’d forgotten existed. It was like untangling a massive ball of yarn. My desk was covered in scribbled diagrams that probably looked like a madman’s work.
Here’s a simplified version of what I pieced together as his ‘core tenets’, if you can call them that:
- Stop trying to be clever and just observe.
- Document the symptoms like you’re a doctor, not an engineer. Be precise.
- Isolate the problem by changing one thing at a time. And I mean one tiny thing.
- Don’t assume anything. Verify. Then verify again.
That last one, “Don’t assume anything,” really got me. I realized how many shortcuts my brain takes, how many assumptions I make daily just to get through the workload. Furtado’s approach forces you to slow down to an almost painful degree. There were times I thought, “This is ridiculous, I could have rewritten the module from scratch by now!” My manager kept giving me those looks, you know? The “is he actually working or just staring into space?” kind of looks.
So, What Happened?
Well, after what felt like an eternity of this meticulous, almost painfully slow process, something clicked. By forcing myself to follow these weird steps, I started seeing the problem differently. It wasn’t just a bug in the code anymore; it was a symptom of a much larger, more tangled interaction that I’d completely overlooked before. The issue wasn’t where everyone thought it was. It wasn’t even in the module that was visibly failing!
Turns out, a seemingly unrelated change made weeks ago in a completely different part of the system had this bizarre ripple effect. Something so indirect, I would’ve never found it with my usual “dive-in-and-debug” strategy. The Furtado method, for all its weirdness, actually led me straight to it. Not quickly, mind you. But it got me there.
Fixing it was then surprisingly easy. But the journey to find it? That was something else. I’m not gonna lie, it was frustrating. It tested my patience. But I learned a lot. Mostly about how my own assumptions can be my biggest enemy.
So, will I be using John Furtado’s approach for every little bug? Absolutely not. It’s way too time-consuming for the everyday grind. But for those really deep, mysterious, “nobody has a clue what’s going on” kind of problems? Yeah, I think I’ll keep these notes handy. Sometimes, a completely different way of looking at things is exactly what you need, even if it feels like you’re wading through treacle to get there.
